Don Gillmor’s delightfully alarming new picture book begins with the absurd premise that a boy could eat up so much of the world that “The earth wasn’t even round any more. It was shaped like a banana. There wasn’t much left, and it was going fast.” Young Herman is a giant baby who keeps getting bigger and bigger as he devours all the food around him, then buildings and towns, lakes, countries, and continents. Fortunately, the resourceful and courageous Sarah finds a way to get the world back again.

Greed and runaway appetite are topics we can all relate to, and adults may find uncomfortable parallels to the consumption-based lifestyle of our own society, particularly as Herman eats up Africa with a bit of peanut butter. But the book’s moral message is implied rather than stated, and the story also works as an appealing nonsense tale.

Gillmor has won the Mr. Christie’s and Governor General’s awards, and knows how to build his story artfully, with suspense, apt detail, and lots of humour. The crisp and vigorous language of Gillmor’s text is well-matched by Pratt’s bright acrylic pictures. Pratt shows the huge, thoughtless Herman stuffing his face in large and small pictures, sometimes at disorienting angles, or swelling out to encompass the world. While the early pictures show buildings, cityscapes, and cars, the last few pages show a beautiful green world restored to us.