I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato－童玩繪本樂

SMART (Start Making a Reader Today) Book Award

California Young Reader Medal Los Angeles' 100 Best Books
Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award Winner

                     Kate Greenaway Medal



Summary

Lola is a fussy eater who dislikes carrots, peas, potatoes, mushrooms, spaghetti, eggs, sausages, cauliflower, cabbage, baked beans, bananas, oranges, apples, rice, cheese, fish sticks, and absolutely TOMATOES! Unfortunately, her brother, Charlie, sometimes has to be in charge of her dinner and keeps an eye on her to finish eating this wild range of food. He has to find creative ways to turn disliked foods into tempting treats. So carrots become twiglets from Jupiter and peas become droplets from Greenland. Mashed potatoes become cloud fluff from the pointiest peak of Mount Fuji and fish sticks become ocean nibbles from the supermarket under the sea. The most disgusting food for Lola – tomatoes – now becomes moonsquirters! Smart Charlie successfully made her sister tempt to clean her plates.

Analysis

Characters

1) Types of Characters:

Protagonist (hero): Charlie
Antagonist (villain): Lola

2) The way characters are portrayed:
Flat Characters (stock, static characters or stereotypes)

Setting
1) Type of setting: Integral Setting

Narrative Point of View
Internal Narrator(the 1st person point of view; the narrator uses "we" to refer to themselves)

Plot

An Episodic Plot:

"I will never not ever eat a tomato" consists of a series of loosely related incidents. It can be divided into five chapters:

The first chapter: This chapter first establishes the setting (Lori does not like carrots), then follows the rising action (She sees carrots on the table.) through to a climax (Charlie tells her they are orange twiglets from Jupiter), and concludes with an end (Lola believes what Charlie says and takes bites of them).

The second chapter: This chapter first establishes the setting (Lori does not like beans), then follows the rising action (She sees some peas in the plate.) through to a climax (Charlie tells her they are green drops from Greenland), and concludes with an end (Lola believes what Charlie says and nibbles one or two).

The third chapter: This chapter first establishes the setting (Lori does not like potatoes and not even mashed ones.), then follows the rising action (She sees a potato) through to a climax (Charlie tells her it is cloud fluff from the pointiest peak of Mount Fuji), and concludes with an end (Lola believes what Charlie says and loves to eat it).

The fourth chapter: This chapter first establishes the setting (Lori does not like fish sticks), then follows the rising action (She sees fish sticks in the plate.) through to a climax (Charlie tells her they are ocean nibbles from the supermarket under the sea), and concludes with an end (Lola believes what Charlie says and gobbles them).

The fifth chapter: This chapter first establishes the setting (Lori does not like tomatoes), then follows the rising action (She sees the tomatoes in the bowl.) through to a climax (Lola thinks they are moonsquirters), and concludes with an end (Lola has one tomato).

Conflict

Types of conflicts:

The Protogonist against Another
Charlie has to give Lola, who is a fussy eater, dinner.

The Protogonist against Nature
The names of foods that Charlie tells Lola are not right.

Themes
Types of subjects: Family Life, Imagination, Problem Solving, Likes and Dislikes

Illustration

Lauren Child's appealing illustration makes a huge difference from the books I have ever read. Expressive and colorful collages of photographs are cut into little pieces and placed with her expressive illustration. At the first glance, we could perceive that each page is covered with Lauren Child's sketches and the real appearance of food. Take the first two pages for an example, it is a very obvious case. Lauren Child clips the photograph of a rabbit and pastes it on the table. Also, to take a close look, it is not difficult to find out that she pastes part of the real wallpaper on the wall. A large amount of color and textures hold young chilren's attention naturally. This is an excellent picture book that the whole family could share and read together in order to build up the concepts of objects and stimulate readers' reaction to every little detail in this book.

Reflection

Many young children don't like tomatoes. Some retain that distaste into adulthood. This story shows that stated fussiness about food can simply be a way of getting attention.

Not only do children, but adults have something they do not enjoy eating. Surprisingly, it is classified into the problems of children. “I will never not ever eat a TOMATO”, the winner of the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal for outstanding illustration, is a fussy-eater-themed picture book that won everyone’s love. The author, Laren child, creates the conception of a story book in a unique way by her expressive textures and colorful illustrations. To bring the readers a direct impact, Lauren has a great insight into child’s emotions and designs this book with paste-ups and real objects that children could see in their daily life. Additionally, the author utilizes her imagination by means of creating made-up names of food so as to strengthen children’s fantasy world. Although this book depicts the reality – things happen commonly in our daily routine, the techniques of illustration awake the children’s perception successfully. A traditional theme for this picture book, but a modern, innovative typesetting with oil painting, photographs and special effects made by computer!