The Very Hungry Plant

by Renato Moriconi

Overview

“Both a kid-pleasing snack and a philosophical amuse-bouche.” — Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)

One morning, a beautiful plant sprouts out of the ground, and it is very, very hungry. But water and sunlight aren’t the only things this plant craves: it’s a carnivore! The plant gobbles up everything in its path, from caterpillars to geckos to spaceships. But the plant isn’t the only one who’s hungry… 

With humorous nods to Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Plant is another imaginative adventure from the author-illustrator of The Little Barbarian. Playful, energetic paintings and a dash of absurdity create a story sure to spark laughter with every reading.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802855763
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Pages:	52
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 12.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	AD400L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Renato Moriconi is a Brazilian writer and visual artist. He has had more than forty books for children published in a number of countries throughout the world, including Brazil, France, Mexico, and South Korea. The Little Barbarian (Eerdmans), his North American debut, received multiple starred reviews and was named one of the Boston Globe's best children's books of 2018.

Editorial Reviews

05/24/2021

Though this picture book romp starts with a friendly poke at Eric Carle’s hungry caterpillar, it soon powers beyond that into a fast-moving riot of imaginative fun. Moriconi (The Little Barbarian) paints an Audrey II–esque carnivorous plant, its upward-facing mouth lined with fine red teeth. The bright rays of the sun above it do not satisfy its hunger, “because it was a carnivorous plant.” A page turn shows a familiar-looking caterpillar suspended just above the figure’s open jaws (the actual act of consumption is not pictured), a meal that also fails to sate it. Hand-brushed, bold black text on the verso gives a thump of emphasis to every munch as the plant dispatches small animals, a gymnast and an acrobat, a parachutist... and keeps on going. “The plant grew, and so did its hunger,” Moriconi intones after each meal. The artist keeps the spreads spare and simple, the better to enjoy the book’s resolute, bloody-minded hero. The menu is so wonderfully daft and Moriconi’s paintings are so droll that there’s no time to be frightened en route to a punch line that’s as brutally funny as it is unexpected. Ages 3–7. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Both a kid-pleasing snack and a philosophical amuse-bouche.”

Booklist
“A silly, slightly darker alternative to There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.”

The Wall Street Journal
“Mr. Moriconi’s illustrations are hilarious in their simplicity, especially when, after taking a rest from eating, the plant suffers an unexpected reversal of fortune.”

Publishers Weekly
"A fast-moving riot of imaginative fun."

From the Publisher

★ 2021-06-16
A plant satisfies its hunger with increasingly outlandish meals, until denouement by herbivore.

Moriconi’s text begins with a faintly scientific fact: Sunlight cannot satisfy this carnivorous sprout’s hunger. “That’s why it ate a caterpillar that was passing by.” The plant’s gaping, V-shaped, red-toothed mouth and impending prey suspended in midair above form the visual template for the recto illustrations throughout. After a couple of insects and a spider, the plant consumes a gecko, a rabbit, and a gymnast, growing larger and leafier with each meal. Moriconi’s obvious nod to the amusing dietary choices of Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar ratchets to absurdist heights as the plant eats a flying mammoth, a “bunch of witches,” and a dragon. Understandably sated after ingesting “an angel choir,” its 14th meal, the plant, faux biblically, “stopped eating and rested.” A page devoid of the outsized, hand-lettered text faces the corpulent plant beneath a new, enveloping presence. A page flip reveals the devouring, green-eyed, orange head of “a hungry, herbivorous dinosaur.” Inspired by a friend—a vegetarian restaurateur whose yawn swallowed a fly—Moriconi’s allegory playfully skewers (among other pedantry) children’s literature’s hagiographic tendencies.

Both a kid-pleasing snack and a philosophical amuse-bouche. (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews