Customer Reviews

Inside the Slidy Diner

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The debut children's book of author Laurel Snyder, Inside the Slidy Diner is an exuberant, rhyming picturebook about a young girl's adventures in the Slidy Diner, a restaurant filled with most unusual characters. The Slidy Diner has unusual rules and isn't always quite up to health code regulations, to say the least - but how much of the weirdness could be real, and how much is from a young girl's imagination? The carefree illustrations perfectly complement the story's wild and off-the-wall sense of fun. "My mother said that before my time at The Slidy Diner, there were gigantic ginger cookies here. But the cookies got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and... The same thing might happen to you."

Edie takes us on a tour of the most disgusting diner ever. If Ethelmae's sticky buns don't make you shudder, her sticky back will. Blech! Each detail provided is more loathsome than the last.

The interior of the Slidy Diner is loud, greasy and smelly. Strange critters creep about, moldy wallpaper hugs the walls and plates of unidentifiable foods layer the tables. Bugs creep in every nook, the coffee will give you terrible hives and strange animals roam about in the kitchen. Don't be fooled by the pretty waitresses - those are only masks. Edie knows it all - she was caught sneaking a lemon drop and now spends her days trapped inside the Slidy Diner.

The illustrations serve to make adults squirm in their chairs and children squirm with delight. There is an ick factor here that is intended expressly for those who appreciate it. From the oddball customers to the kooky animal heads mounted on the wall, there are gruesome details tucked in every corner that readers will delight in discovering.

But there is also a bit of magic at the Slidy Diner, as evidenced by the birds that rest on Edie's arm, the nightcap wearing mouse and secret trapdoors. Really, it isn't so bad here! Would you care for a lemon drop?

Laurel Snyder based the book on her own experiences at a diner, which is slightly disturbing. Exactly who does Ethelmae represent? Check out Laurel's blog, which is pretty entertaining.

I'm an author and illustrator, so I've seen a lot of books. But when I picked up this book, I was entranced from the cover all the way to the end. First, the prose is unique, lovely, quirky...a perfect match for the brilliant illustrations. My three- and five-year-old kids and I have been reading this one nightly. Each time we see different things in the illustrations we hadn't seen before...a mouse on a cat's back, an eye peeking through a hole in the wall...It's so much fun! It's the story of a young girl who gets stuck in the Slidy Diner after nabbing a lemon drop--and what an imaginative tale! If you love quirky, dark things that are just creepy enough to be fun but not so much that it turns scary, this is for you. I haven't seen my kids quite so enamored with a book in a while.

Nicole Seitz
author/illustrator of The Spirit of Sweetgrass, Trouble the Water, and A Hundred Years of Happiness

I'm not sure how a writer can infuse a book with the riotous qualities of a gross-out competition and twist it into something strangely magical and beautiful, but Laurel Snyder does just this. She slings us Lady Fingers that "really are" and wraps them in a lemon drop to help them slide down.