The Last Peach
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Gus Gordon's The Last Peach is the story of two indecisive bugs contemplating eating the last peach of the summer in a hilarious picture book about anticipation and expectation.
Summer’s almost over, and there’s one peach left.
There’s also one big question in the air: Should someone eat it?
What if it’s rotten inside?
But what if it’s juicy?
Should the bug who saw it first get to eat it?
Should both bugs share it with their friends?
Will anyone eat the peach?! EVER?!?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This existential meditation by Gordon (Herman and Rosie) deals with some big questions. Two wide-eyed insects contemplate a red-orange globe that hangs suspended amid green leaves. "Oh my," one exclaims. "Now THAT is a fine peach!" They begin the discussion agreeably enough ("Let's eat it. At once!"), but as others weigh in ("You can't eat that peach!"), attitudes shift to anxiety ("We would probably... get big tummy aches"), then to fantasy ("What if we ate it and could suddenly do magical things?") before spiraling into frank conflict: " That is MY peach!' No, it's MY peach!' " Gordon composes leafy collage-style spreads in paper accented with snippets of vintage French type. The insects bear more than a passing resemblance to the clowns in Beckett's Waiting for Godot; one has a hat and a curling proboscis, while the other sports antennae and a red schnozz. In the wistful ending, the two friends decide that the object of their desire is too beautiful to eat, denying themselves the pleasure they've been anticipating all along. And after they leave, another surprise awaits readers. Some desires, this sly fable suggests, may be founded on illusion. Ages 4 8.