Baby Pie

The moon is out as three little trolls, Oink, Boink and Moink, set out to hunt for the chief ingredient for their supper – Baby Pie. ‘Can you sniff it?… Can you whiff it?… Lick lips, pat belly, my oh my.’

They sneak through the streets, over fences and flowerbeds, up a drainpipe, along a landing, up onto shoulders then into the baby’s bedroom where an unpleasant surprise awaits. Then boy do they run, stumbling and squawking for their lives. It’s enough to turn those erstwhile villains vegetarian.

As with all the best picture books it’s a case of showing, not telling; here it’s all a matter of scale, though there is a clue in the opening line. Using moon-glow shades of green, blue and purple, and a variety of unusual perspectives, Nick Ward heightens the tension of the hunt and gives us all manner of clues that the mock-scary, hairy trolls with pointy ears, teeth, fingers, toes and tongues may be trying to bite off more than they can chew.

This breath-holding saga had my audiences of 3- and 4-year-olds enthralled; there was much sniffing, whiffing, lip licking and belly patting and cries of ‘read it again, now!’