Yzerman's Full Review: Niamh Sharkey - The Ravenous Beast
“I am the Hungriest Animal of All,” said the Ravenous Beast. “I’m hungry, hungry, hungry! I’m so hungry I could eat the big yellow house on the hill. Gobble it up! Swallow it down! Not THAT’S what I call hungry!”
So begins the story of The Ravenous Beast, written by Niamh Sharkey and published by Candlewick Press in 2003.
My four-year old daughter found this book in a discount book store a few months ago; she came running to me yelling, “Mama, I want this one!” As I took it from her, I could immediately see what had attracted her to this book. The cover of this book is plum-colored, with a short, squatty “beast” of green and orange: very colorful! The beast is a one-of-a-kind creature, but reminds me somewhat of a dinosaur with an over-sized head and sharp teeth. Despite this description, the beast is adorable. I knew after flipping through the pagers that my daughter had found a wonderful book, and it has now become our favorite bedtime story.
Page by page, the Ravenous Beast is challenged by eight other creatures who claim to be more ravenous than he, from a little white mouse to a gigantic whale. For example:
“Flip! Flap-doodle!” said the grinning lion. “I’m as hungry as can be. I’m so hungry I could eat a ray gun, a rocket, a toffee from my pocket, a trampoline, a trombone with a dent, a bouncing ball, and a circus tent. Bite’em up! Bolt’em down! Now THAT’S what I call hungry!”
The list of items each creature claims that he can eat gets longer and sillier as the book goes on. The ending is hilarious as the Beast tries to re-capture his title of the “Hungriest of All”, which I am not going to give away here because it would ruin it for those who want to get this book.
The illustration of The Ravenous Beast is the first huge selling point. Sharkey used rich and colorful oils and full-page illustrations, along with adorable characters, to tell this story. Each double-page layout details the creatures and their “claim of hunger” on one side, and on the other is a full-page illustration of the creature along with all of the items they claim they can eat, each with a bite taken out of it.
Sharkey, however, does not just rely on the illustrations to sell the book. The story itself is humorous and entertaining. Repetition, rhythm and rhyme are present throughout the book. Sharkey definitely intended this book to be read aloud. Each creature starts out with phrases like, “Nonsense! Smonsense!”, “Hokum! Pokum!”, “Mumbo-jumbo!”, and “Whoosh! Swoosh”. The creatures also say things like: “Suck’em up! Scoff’em down!” and “Munch’em up! Crunch’em down!”.
The Ravenous Beast is a hard cover book, which is approximately 11”X10” and is 32 pages long. I would recommend the book for ages 2 to about 8. Don’t buy this book for your child if you are going to give it to him/her to read on their own; this would be a disservice to both your child and the author. This book is meant to be read out LOUD with more than one person, otherwise the rhythm and rhyme will be lost. I have read it to my daughter so many times that she has it pretty much memorized, so sometimes she “reads” it back to me. We have silly voices for each character and have also added some silly rhymes to some of the pages. The ending of the story still leaves my daughter in fits of giggles.
Amazon has this book listed at $11.69 for “new” and $9.00 “used”. We found it new at a discount book store for $2.50, however, I would have been willing to pay much more for it. I definitely recommend this book; both my daughter and I think it is one of the funniest children’s books that we have come across. It is a shame that Epinions doesn’t have a picture of book so that people can see just how cute this book is.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.