From Publishers Weekly
Alvie won't eat a soup‡on of anything but soup. As a baby, his first word is "Mulligatawny!" (a recipe is included). In the Polaroids that chart his formative years, he shuns solid food and snuggles his cheek against a can of chicken stock. Alvie's anxious mother and father, whose worst fears appear in giant thought bubbles, imagine their son paper-thin or hefted by his little sister, Delilah, an omnivore who grows chubbier by the page. "To make matters worse, Alvie's granny was a world-famous chef," and an unimpressed Alvie notices only "the ladle" in the shop window that displays her cookbook. Before a visit from Granny, Alvie's embarrassed parents hide all evidence of his single-minded passion. Although this story starts out like Russell Hoban's Bread and Jam for Frances, Collins (The No-Nothings and Their Baby) takes a detour at the conclusion and lets Alvie stay finicky-and readers discover he has a kindred spirit in Granny. In pencil, watercolor and acrylic compositions as meticulous as Alvie, Collins lavishes attention on the angular characters' dramatic gestures, pointy tufts of hair and fashionably rumpled clothes. His illustrations hearken back to early 20th-century comics, but the precious style does not make up for a lack of substance. The story rests on a one-joke premise, but with lots of fanfare nevertheless. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2-From its soup-can cover art to its whimsical cartoon illustrations, this zany book is sure to delight picky eaters everywhere. Alvie eats nothing but soup. His parents fret and compare him to his sister Delilah, who is omnivorous, but they indulge his cravings until they receive news that Granny Franny is coming for a visit. Now the frantic family tries to change Alvie's eating habits so he won't embarrass them in front of his grandmother, a world-famous chef and cookbook author. When that doesn't work, they try to hide the problem by treating Granny to dinner out at a table so laden with food that she won't notice what Alvie is (or is not) eating. However, she surprises them all with her own finicky taste. A humorous romp through the oft-familiar landscape of childhood quirks.
Laurie Edwards, West Shore School District, Camp Hill, PACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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