An insatiable boy made of clay devours everything in sight until a fiesty goat ruins his appetite. Vibrant paintings invigorate this retelling of a Russian folktale.
here comes the Gingerbread Man on steroids! Ginsburg's rambunctious adaptation of a Russian folktale introduces a little clay fellow who is fashioned by a lonely elderly couple, comes to life and starts wreaking havoc. "I am here! I am hungry!" the clay boy announces, and begins to devour everything in sight, including Grandma and Grandpa and their livestock. "More! I want more!" he cries, growing (as graduated type sizes demonstrate) "bigger, and bigger, and bigger," until he's a giant, gulping down everything and everyone he meets. Finally, he's routed by a clever goat, who shatters the clay boy, releasing unharmed all those he's swallowed. It's an exuberant, larger-than-life tale, and Ginsburg (The King Who Tried to Fry an Egg on His Head) tells it with gusto, energizing her assured prose with the well-placed repetition ("thump, thump, thump" go the big clay feet) that makes for a prime read-aloud. Smith's (Runnery Granary) paintings play up the story's ethnic roots with tidy, thatched-roof cottages and cheerful peasants, the women in babushkas, the men in flowing beards and Cossack shirts. His vision of the clay boy is deliciously creepy, too the amorphous, omnivorous figure looks not unlike a plumped-up Boo Radley and will no doubt deliver a mild dose of the shivers to delighted young audiences. Ages 5-up. (May) Copyright 1998 Publishers Weekly Reviews
K-Gr 2?A retelling of a traditional Russian folktale. An older couple whose children have grown and gone away yearn for the company of a child. Grandpa fashions a boy out of a piece of clay, and as the boy dries out by the fire, Clay Boy comes to life saying, "I am here! I am hungry!" The two old peasants feed him all they have and watch him in astonishment as he quickly grows to gargantuan proportions. But Clay Boy's appetite cannot be satisfied so he goes outside and eats the chickens, geese, cat, dog, then Grandma and Grandpa (yikes!), and all the other inhabitants of this rural Old World village. The last living being is a little white goat who saves the day by destroying Clay Boy and rescuing all held captive within him. Children will be engaged by the fast pace of events and simplicity of character and outcome. However, the visual interpretation of this tale is potentially frightening. While Smith's watercolors masterfully portray all of the characters and scenes, his rendition of the boy made of clay is at times so grotesquely distorted that it could cause nightmares.?Amelia Kalin, Valley Cottage Library, NY
