Wednesday, August 22, 2007

because it's time for lunch...

it seems to me that several of my favorite kids' books involved:

1. a somewhat logical daydream taken to the limit
2. food as a central plot point

"cloudy with a chance of meatballs" really got my goat as a youngin' because i knew there was no such thing as a food storm and it was common knowledge that adults (especially ones with gray hair) were not to be trusted on these subjects. but unlike a lot of fantastical stories, i was able to let this one slide past my adolescent logic-o-meter because the idea of spaghetti and meatballs falling from the sky was just too delicious to say: "no, thank you".

on the subject of goats being gotten, i really felt for this guy. all he wanted was to eat his favorite foods, unharrassed. unfortunately, his parents had a much more conventional view on how children should eat. the great thing about this story was that it clearly indicated that parents should meet in the middle on such important culinary issues. an inspiration for pixar's "ratatouille"?

maybe you can help me with this last one (because the world wide web certainly didn't) -

there's a book about a boy (a bear, perhaps?) whose parents leave town and so he decides to make a big pot of popcorn. only he fills it up with too many kernals and it overflows all over the kitchen. then the living room. and continues until the whole house is full of popcorn. out of necessity, he and his friends eat all of it to prevent his parents from finding out.

do you know the title? author? protagonist's name?
(it has a midnight blue cover with a picture of lots and lots of popcorn.)

2 comments:

Tricky Nicky said...

I hate you because I should know what this is! I can tell you that at this very moment, a copy of that book is sitting on a bookshelf at my parents' house. Now, I have to either call my mom and have her look through our entire children's book collection, or have it haunt me until I finally remember.

I'll let you know what course of action I shall take.
Nic

johnny said...

I KNOW! It's killing me at present so please let me know what you discover on your quest.