the smelly sprout

Modern, funny and a heart-warming tale about an unwanted Brussels sprout. It is set around Christmas time when this vegetable is usually prepared with the rest of the traditional English Christmas Dinner. It is commonly hated by most children who refuse to eat them, a fact which the author uses to make the plot identifiable to children.

The poor Brussels sprout is all alone and gets thrown out into the snowy ground by a ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ (who hates sprouts) when they find the innocent sprout in the vegetable bowl by accident. The sprout goes on a journey to find a home but finds himself rejected by many, including a snowman and a Christmas tree. The only friend he manages to find is a small and hungry mouse in the forest, but then a fox enters the scene, which chases them to eat the mouse. The sprout jumps bravely into the fox’s mouth, then the fox spits out the sprout because the fox like all the others in the story does not like sprouts, thus the sprout saves the mouse from being a "Christmouse Dinner". And like many other tales, this ends happily but not in the usual fashion since the sprout asks the mouse to eat him. The sprout finds a happy home inside the warm stomach of the mouse and the mouse is also content having had something to eat before hibernating. The moral of the story seems to be that you can find the right place for yourself even if it may be difficult, but I suspect it is just a diverting tale to convince children to eat Brussels sprouts. Plenderleith’s ploy to achieve this is through attempting to incite pity in the audience (little children in this case) for the lonely and sad sprout by showing in the plot how no one wants to eat him and that his rightful home is in a warm ‘tummy’.

The pictures are bright in colour and look like computer-drawn graphics. Each character has a very vivid expression on their face, emphasising the surprised or disgusted look. The book is rather small for a picture book, about A5 size but in a square shape. Every page has both writing and has a picture on it, apart from one section in the middle where it shows the sprout walking on the right page but shows his tiny footprints from the left page. The lack of text made the loneliness of the sprout more apparent as he walks in silence across the wide city landscape towards the forest, where he meets the mouse. Text and picture add to each other as the plot thickens and takes up equal attention as they use up an equal share of every page. The sprout’s rejection is highlighted through the text when he is either spat out or thrown out onto the right page from the left, and on the right page the caption reads in big bold letters, "Out, smelly sprout!" The instances when the picture adds to the story are through the details drawn to show the visual part of the text. For instance, when the text tells us about the drooling fox, in the picture the fox is drawn with slanting evil eyes with his tongue sticking out of his mouth with droplets of drool dripping out.

As a picture book, The Smelly Sprout does its job in entertaining and is enjoyable because it is humorous in a way that both parents and children can relate to. The idea of humanising a hated vegetable could be a clever way in ingratiating The Smelly Sprout to young children but whether it is truly successful in this endeavour is questionable. The book’s interesting characters add to its charm as a picture book since it allows the person who reads it aloud to the children to take liberties with the different voices. I recommend the book for a quick amusing read or definitely one to read out to children around this time of year to keep them entertained on a cold winter’s day.

You write very well, Seng-Htoi