The zesty flavour of Loris Lesynski’s Boy Soup may be addictive for many young readers. Indeed, last year’s rollicking rhyme sensation about a giant with a cold (and a rather gruesome recipe for a cure) whets the appetite for another tale about delightful ways of duping monsters.

In Ogre Fun, an ogre-boy named Gronny is bored and twitchy, but his elders have warned him about the nasty ailments to be caught from frolicking with witches and trolls. Ever restless, young Gronny figures that human children are a good bet for a safe, satisfying scare, so he roams off to observe a lively game of baseball. Ironically, the player on second base seems to be suffering from boredom too. As everyone knows, nothing is more contagious than a yawn. Gronny certainly gets his nemesis for trying to mess with harmless humans. The ogre clan is definitely not amused with the “funny kind of tugging” that sends the whole pack into hysterical contortions. “They couldn’t finish supper – they couldn’t use their spoons. Their ogre cheeks puffed in and out like lumpy green balloons.” Imagine huge, animated root vegetables with mouths askew, and you may get a notion of Lesynski’s colourful cartoon-like illustrations of ogres in the clench of a yawning fit.

How Gronny resolves the group’s dilemma displays another humorously ironic Lesynski touch. Let’s just say that the ogre-boy can’t recognize a screamingly good scare when he causes one, but he does manage to come home with a cure that has the other ogres bursting into “song.” As in Boy Soup, monsters and humans are both offered happy solutions to their situations. They may even learn something useful from the experience.

Ogre Fun manages to be zany and logical, madcap and moral, an appealing concoction of eyecatching pictures and earcatching language guaranteed to be an antidote to boredom and yawns. Lesynski obviously knows a good combination when she creates one.