Only an absolute monster would eat a kid, right? So why do the children keep disappearing...? Marcus Cutler's sly and subversive picture book I Do Not Eat Children cautions readers to take a narrator's word with a grain of salt.
Ten children in a line fill the bottom of a vast double-page spread. The crowd includes a knitter, a trumpeter, a pig-tailed reader, a few athletes--oh, and a giant orange monster in green and yellow striped pants. "I do not eat children," the monster announces. "I would never eat a child," it admonishes on the next page, although a trumpet now sits on the ground amongst only nine children. "What do you think I am...," it chides as a soccer ball bounces by. (We're down to eight.) "...A monster?" With each page turn, a child vanishes from the line-up, leaving behind some small vestige of their presence. Their numbers dwindle until we find our monster standing menacingly over the lone remaining child, who stares back at it. "I do eat liars," the pig-tailed reader announces.
Cutler (Dear Polar Bears) makes terrific use of white space and the book's format, using the landscape of the open book to emphasize the dwindling cast of characters. Thanks to minimal text on most spreads and several expressively illustrated wordless pages, Cutler invites readers to focus on visual storytelling details like the detritus left in each child's wake and the revealing contents of the monster's belches. This tale of comeuppance employs page turns to ratchet up tension and will likely hold listeners rapt during read-alouds. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf