The Worst Breakfast
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Miéville, known for his genre-defying fantasy novels for adults, makes a splash with his picture book debut . . . a subversive delight." —School Library Journal
Two sisters sit down one morning and begin describing all of the really gross things that were in the worst breakfast they ever had, until all they can picture is a table piled sky-high with the weirdest, yuckiest, slimiest, slickest, stinkiest breakfast possible. And then they have the best breakfast ever . . . almost.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2016
A Mississippi Clarion-Ledger Bestseller
"This is a child's imagination come to life, where a good thing can be the greatest thing in existence and a minor inconvenience snowballs into the most horrendous, atrocious, appalling, not good, very bad meal you've ever had." —San Francisco Book Review
"Miéville and Smith's dialogue is fantastic: witty, smart, with great rhythm that doesn't sacrifice artful turns of phrase to reach for an internal rhyme . . . A brilliant, original, infinitely rereadable book that can sit alongside Sendak and Dahl." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Miéville lets it rip in this stomping, howling rant about a bad meal of legendary proportions." —Publishers Weekly
"Imaginative and fun, The Worst Breakfast is perfect for any picky eater out there. A rhyming scheme and inventive text kept up the giggles and the pace." —100 Pages a Day
"Deftly written by the exceptionally talented China Miéville and shockingly but gifted illustrated by Zak Smith, The Worst Breakfast is a unique picture book that will be enduringly popular . . . Very highly recommended." —Midwest Book Review
Publishers Note: This is the flowable text e-book edition, optimized for e-ink readers that cannot support fixed layout e-books. If you have a tablet or software that can support fixed format e-books, please search for The Worst Breakfast: Fixed Layout Edition. The Fixed Layout e-book more closely resembles the illustrator's and author's design of the print book. This edition presents the text and images separately, on alternating pages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mi ville (Railsea) lets it rip in this stomping, howling rant about a bad meal of legendary proportions. "You can't have forgotten the worst breakfast!" cries the older of two dark-skinned sisters sitting at the kitchen table. "The toast was burnt! The smell!/ The smoke! It made us choke!" The younger sister's admission that she doesn't remember merely spurs the older one on. "And the porridge!... It should be creamy, made of oats,/ not gunk scraped off the hulls of boats." The festival of gustatory horrors builds to a page-long litany of medieval-sounding (but real) dishes: "Salmagundi, gruel, stinking bishop, and liver.... syllabub, muktuk, and limpin' Susan." Punk artist Smith's neatly framed dialogue boxes and crisp black contours have a buttoned-up look, but no: tentacles wave from inside bowls, monsters smile amid mountains of vile sausages, and a blue alien juggles cherry tomatoes. As the pages turn, the towers of bad food grow ever loftier. In the end, a simple tea strainer saves the sisters from another terrible meal. This one's for families enamored of new words, exotic foods, and strong opinions. Ages 3 7.
