Monsters Don't Eat
Broccoli
by Barbara Jean Hicks
Illustrated by Sue
Hendra
Monsters
don't eat broccoli...or do they?
And if they don't eat broccoli, what DO they eat?
In this ode to
imagination (and vegetables),
a group of grinning, brightly colored Godzillas
gleefully rampage across the pages to prove just how far
their distaste for broccoli stretches.
These goofy, toothy
monsters will delight
even the most timid of young readers.
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Click on the cover to see MONSTERS DON'T EAT BROCCOLI brought to life in
toe-tapping animation. Thanks,
Cecilia Olivera-Hillway!
FREE HUNGRY MONSTER FUN STUFF!
Enjoy these coloring pages created by illustrator
Sue Hendra for Monsters Don't Eat Broccoli.
Each FREE downloadable picture fits on one sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper. Make
sure to set your printer for landscape for the first one and portrait for the
others.
|
  
Thanks, Sue, for the fabulous coloring pages!
Click on the
image for a full page picture to print and color.
|
For
my Broccoli book launch in August 2009, I created a Broccoli Fan Cookbook from
recipes sent by friends and fans. The limited edition original was a 20-page
mini (4-1/4 x 5-1/2 inches), but I've created a printable, 5-page 8-1/2 x 11
inch version for readers to download. Some recipes appear more healthy than
others, but of course that depends on your dietary needs. All will help you get
your daily dose of five fruits and veggies a day. All have been tested by the
senders. All, I'm told, are delicious! You'll also find fun facts about
broccoli.
Thanks, Broccoli Fans,
for the delectable recipes!
Click on the image
for broccoli recipes.
DID YOU MISS THE BROCCOLI BLOG TOUR?
Click here for current links to the 14
interviews, reviews, podcasts, book trailers
and other fun BROCCOLI stuff that were part of my first ever cyber book tour.
Highlights below:
BROCCOLI INTERVIEWS
Terry Pierce talks to
Barbara about children and healthy eating on her blog,
Write Revise Repeat.
Sherrie
Petersen talks to Barbara about the switch from writing romance novels to
writing children’s books on her blog,
Write About Now.
Jaime Temairik Hedquist,
who is an artist/illustrator herself, talks to BROCCOLI illustrator Sue Hendra
for the MSN book blog,
BOUND, and features Sue’s artwork on her Readergirlz blog,
CocoaStomp.
Little
Willow conducts a three-way interview with illustrator Sue Hendra, editor Erin
Clarke, and Barbara on her blog,
Bildungsroman.
Terry Pierce talks to editor Erin
Clarke about matching up author and the illustrator in another
Write Revise Repeat blog interview.
Suzanne Lieurance conducts a
radio interview with Barbara about BROCCOLI, her life, and writing on
Book Bites for Kids (Blog Talk Radio).
BROCCOLI REVIEWS
The
Best BROCCOLI Video Review Ever:
Master monster reviewers
Gene Sisko and Roger Elbert
go two thumbs up for BROCCOLI!
 The
Best BROCCOLI Audio Review Ever:
Mark & Andrea for
Just One More Book |
 The
Best BROCCOLI Print Review Ever:
Elizabeth Bird for
Fuse 8 Productions |
Review Excerpts:
"With a toe-tapping beat and loud, splashy
spreads, this paean to mealtime chaos will charm small monsters everywhere....
Too much
fun to limit to kids who don't like broccoli." ―Publishers
Weekly
"Hendra’s adorable illustrations have
an almost pop-art zeal." ―Booklist
"Gasping, gobbling, grinning, crunching and belching, seven sherbet-coloured
monsters revel in outrage at their broccoli-loving readers in this rhyming
enticement to eat green."
―Just One More Book
"Hilarious [and] imaginative..."
―Carolina Parent
"An eye-catching, colorful book...about how to make eating healthy food fun."
―Fort
Worth Star-Telegram
"...will make little ones think twice about turning up their noses at
vegetables."
―The
Edmond Sun
"...a wonderfully written story about imagination
and healthy food choices.... excellent for reading aloud, choral reading and
even acting out." ―Sacramento
Book Review
From Pictures
to Words and Back Again:
Wherein the Author Reveals
How Monsters Don't Eat Broccoli Came to Be
Monsters Don't Eat
Broccoli has an interesting history—already! My editor at Knopf came
across a book dummy in the offices of Random House England for a project that
had been contracted and then abandoned. (A book dummy is a prototype that
an author-illustrator puts together to market a story, comprised of text,
sketches and two or three finished pieces.)
My editor loved the illustrations, but the
text had been written for a pop-up novelty book, which she wasn't interested in
doing. When she got back to the States, she sent me a
copy of the dummy and asked if I could come up with a story for the pictures.
Normally, the story comes first and the editor looks for an
illustrator after the text has been contracted, so this was highly unusual.
The original story was about
the things that monsters eat, and on one page the monsters were having a "food
fight" with trees that reminded me of broccoli. I wanted Sue to be able to use
the sketches she'd already completed, so I wrote a text that was about monsters
eating but from a completely different perspective. I changed the order of the
drawings, left out a couple of pages and added several others with suggestions
for illustrations.
When Sue got the text, she
immediately picked up on the healthy eating theme, which is funny because what I
thought I was writing about was a healthy imagination! She dressed up a couple
of the monsters in spots and stripes that identify them on the last two pages as
kids pretending to be monsters--and of course they aren't eating broccoli,
they're eating trees. Then she cleverly added endpapers that complete the
transformation of "monster" food at the front into healthy snacks at the back:
buildings become slices of Swiss cheese, boulders become grapes, wheels become
tomato slices and broccoli, of course, become "yummy, gummy trees."
In the end, it was a case of
Sue's illustrations inspiring my text, which inspired her final
illustrations--from pictures to words and back again.
Before I started working on
the text, Sue sent me the sketches above to help me get a sense of her goofy,
hungry monsters, which inspired a very goofy, silly text! The final artwork for
MONSTERS DON'T EAT BROCCOLI is even
more vibrant and fun.
All text and images on this website © Barbara Jean Hicks 2005-2009
unless otherwise identified. Text and images may be used for educational and
other non-commercial purposes if copyright and website information are
clearly stated. Commercial use of all text and images is strictly prohibited.
