From My Reading Chair…
Feetloaf. Snot Roast. Bunion Rings. Macaroni & Sneeze... YUM!
I will always, always, ALWAYS adore a spooky book involving creepy characters, funny food, social-norm switcheroos and a few puns to garnish! So, reading that Count Spatula’s Bloody Bistro serves spaghetti eyeballs, hamboogers and tater toes, and chill-flea nachos? I’m booking a table for one, please and thank you! I would genuinely love to bring its disgusting delicacies to life one day... one day.
As both writer and illustrator, Izzy B turns the familiar human/monster divide and our normative expectations inside out as the diners recoil from a terrifying ‘Beast’... I won’t spoil it for you. It is a genuinely fun comedic reversal, delivered with excellent timing and enough gross-out gusto to pack in plenty of laughs.
Izzy B clearly has enormous fun with the character design and hidden visual jokes too. The table ‘legs’ and toilet notices are exactly the sort of tiny details that reward all the rereads this book will inevitably receive. I only wish he had leaned even further into those smaller, stranger visual gags throughout the fuller-page compositions, because that is where the artwork really comes alive for me.
A deliciously disgusting recommendation for little monsters who appreciate gross food, funny menus and, erm, cute beasts?!
Creep On Reading, Pumpkins!