The Cave Downwind of the Cafe

A young bogey named Glumfoot has grown up in a cave where breakfast is made from mould and gloom. Life is all sludge and steam until a human baker sets up shop downwind, her pastries filling the forest with smells that stir something new in him — hunger, yes, but also longing. What follows is a comic fable about taste, temptation, and the courage to change the menu you were given.
Please’s return to this world runs parallel to his earlier tale, revealing how Glumfoot came to join the baker and, in doing so, unearths the truth behind the ogre’s menace. Readers will delight in these back-threads of story that expand the mythos of the woods while deepening its emotional logic. Glumfoot’s quest to save Renee hinges not on disguise but disclosure — he triumphs precisely by refusing to hide what makes him different.

Once again, Please’s art defies geometry: there’s not a straight line in sight. Every form quivers with life, as if the drawings themselves breathe. His signature hand-carved aesthetic — sculptural, light-scattered, tactile — finds perfect expression in HarperCollins’ sumptuous production, the dense paper stock and rich inks amplifying every nuance of texture and tone. The result is a book that feels made, not printed.
The writing too shows real craft. Please’s rhyming verse is both metrical and musical, its scansion carrying the narrative forward with humorous timing. Lines expand and contract like breath, echoing Glumfoot’s own journey from stifled cave to open air. The rhythm works not only as sound but as storytelling — a pulse that binds humour, tension, and tenderness into one continuous beat.
Grotesque and tender, funny and wise, this is storytelling of control and warmth — proof that even the most unlikely hero can rise from bogey broth to blessed brioche.