Since winning the Governor-General’s Award for her illustration of Sleep Tight, Mrs. Ming in 1993, Mireille Levert has been writing and illustrating her own picture books, which include several fairy tale adaptations and the Molly board books. Her new picture book is another delectable concoction, amply displaying her fertile, transforming imagination, so visually and emotionally true in its representation of children’s comic, scarily fanciful vision of the world. Mireille Levert’s vibrantly hued, Matisse-like illustrations are a scrumptious treat for the eye and imagination. All curves and contours, her warmly enveloping watercolours energetically swirl with movement and mischievous invention.

The book opens with Victor of the Noodle, grand knight of the Order of the Macaroni, absorbed in his play battles. When his mother calls him for supper, a treacherous struggle commences when she utters the dreaded command, “Eat, Victor!” Mouth shut tight, Victor refuses to eat the menacing bowl of fish soup in front of him. His mother, calling on all her powers of maternal ingenuity, devises a food game. Pointing to a crust of bread floating in the soup, she announces it’s an island and invites Victor to sail to it on a soup spoon. On his trek through the island, Victor encounters a barrage of flying peas and carrots and a pepper dragon and is snatched by the Bad Fairy Zoop. But not to worry, mother comes to the rescue, slaying dragons with water and lassoing the Fairy. Game over, Victor discovers his fantastic voyage has made him very hungry indeed. Levert’s dispatch from the food wars amusingly dramatizes what an adventure, in more ways than one, mealtime can be.