Giant Meatball

Children's Literature

AGERANGE: Ages 5 to 8.

A giant meatball is the unusual main character of this very strange story. The proud meatball has bounced his way around the fields for years, singing "Roundy, boundy, moundy me!" The townsfolk are annoyed at his careless romping. But when asked to quiet down, he will not listen. When he makes a mess careening through the center of town, the mayor goes to speak to him quietly. But the meatball, full of his own importance, rolls over and flattens her. The ending is an amusing surprise. The cartoony illustrations of people and animals, produced with black Prismacolor pencil and colored in Adobe Illustrator, are fun as well. Even cats and mice are reading in the library as the meatball bounces by and the librarian tries to shush him. The shops in town have names like "Stinky Pinky Fine Cheeses & Hams," "Oy Vey Berets," "Kit and Kapoodles," and "Immaculate Confection." The giant pink meatball just keeps going while the fun goes on. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

School Library Journal

K-Gr 3- An enormous meatball "bomple[s] and bounce[s] his way" through the countryside, blissfully oblivious to the problems he creates. Despite leaving behind a trail of farms with crushed raspberry patches and disquieted cows, and disrupting city streets, the meatball remains confident that the people "...can't get enough of me." The townsfolk's polite suggestions for caution graduate to furious billboards, which get no results. Fed up, the mayor decides to give the troublemaker "a good talking-to," but the meatball temporarily flattens her. The final page shows the villagers seated at a large table that holds a gargantuan (covered) dish with a sign, "Menu du Jour-Meatball." The dialogue is likely to confound some kids: "He sullies our jellies and jeopardizes our jams." Although the cartoon artwork, drawn with black Prismacolor pencil and colored in Adobe Illustrator, has quirky charm, the lead character is vaguely disturbing. Apparently raw, he is a lumpy pink blob with dents, one eyebrow, and short arms and legs. He wears white socks and dress shoes, and has buck teeth. If you have a picture-book audience for dark humor and oddball characters, you might consider this book for your collection.-Gay Lynn Van Vleck, Henrico County Library, Glen Allen, VA

Kirkus Reviews

In the fine tradition of stories featuring oversized food, here's a cautionary tale about a narcissistic meatball who comes to a bad and sudden end. So full of himself is the boulder-sized 'ball bounding destructively through pastures, gardens and streets that he ignores the farmer's bleats of protest, the marmalade-maker's boiling fury and even-kiss of death-the librarian's furious shushing. Weinstock's writing, which features lines like "But the giant meatball was too woozy with whirling and whistling to listen," outpaces his cartoon art-which owes much to James Marshall's for the way figures are depicted, and centers on a rotund protagonist that, being colored an odd shade of off-pink, looks more like silly putty than anything you'd want to eat. Nonetheless, once the meatball rolls over the Mayor his fate is sealed, and he ends his mad career as all meatballs must. Yum. (Picture book. 6-8)