Ten Fat Sausages

Young readers familiar with the rhyme may enjoy this, or may go off eating sausages completely, as the fat sausages in this picture book have faces, and little arms and legs, and they are brothers and sisters, or best friends. Some decide that they don’t want to be eaten:  ‘“Well, I won’t go Bang and I won’t go Pop”, and sausage number 2 went hop, hop, hop’. Sausage number 2 meets his end in another way, and so it continues. Some do go Bang and Pop, others escape into different hazardous situations, and only two wounded sausages limp out of the last page. Adults really do need to know about this book to avoid the possibility of traumatised children…

Michelle Robinson has a lot of picture books to her name, including Goodnight Tractor and a whole Goodnight… series, and A Beginner’s Guide To Bear-Spotting, which was quirky and good. The rhymes are great, and the retro-style illustrations are fun, with some details to spot. Tor Freeman is English, but she spent some time in California, which explains why one of the recipe books on the kitchen shelf is ‘Ways with Wieners’.  A bowl holds items of fruit who observe all this, and they have faces, too- the blueberries definitely get upset at the carnage as one escaped sausage, taking refuge in a nice big jug with a mysterious button on it, gets blended. It’s a lovely production, on thick pages and in bright colours, but possibly adults should be wary. Tough children might just love it.