Review by Booklist Review
Brazilian author-illustrator Moriconi (The Little Barbarian, 2018) dishes up an epic helping of absurdity that will have kids howling with laughter before the book is done--and it all starts with a newly sprouted Venus flytrap. The small green plant pops against the white page it shares with the hand-painted text and a rotating stream of victims destined to become its next meal. This is one hungry, carnivorous plant. It sits with its mouth gaping open until it gobbles up a passing caterpillar, followed by a butterfly and a spider. After each meal, the sinister refrain repeats, "The plant grew, and so did its hunger." A gecko and rabbit are next on the menu, but then things really get wild. A gymnast, an acrobat, an airplane, a flying mammoth! All end up in the plant's toothy maw, now grown quite large. Moriconi delivers increasingly ridiculous prey to the plant--always shown poised just above its mouth--and a final, satisfying twist. A silly, slightly darker alternative to There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
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) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
