The Children’s Book Review | September 1, 2014
Written by Kelly DiPucchio
Illustrated by Eric Wight
Age Range: 3 to 6 years
Paperback: 40 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) (September 1, 2015)
ISBN: 978-0374300524
What to expect: Fun, Humor, Adventure … Bacon!
This charming story centers on a strip of narcissistic Bacon. As the “toast of the town,” Bacon is loved by everyone, causing him to forget about his true friends. Not only that, but he has begun to overlook the envy and annoyance of other breakfast foods who live in his shadow. These foods—including waffles, eggs, pancakes, and even poor Canadian Bacon—once loved Bacon, but no more. Despite smelling great and general deliciousness he has become too self-involved to tolerate, too charmed by his own celebrity. Isolated, Bacon declares that fans are more important than friends anyhow, and buys a fancy car and grows an even fancier moustache. As his popularity grows larger and larger Bacon seems to have it all, until his deliciousness actually causes his downfall.
Written by Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by Eric Wight, Everyone Loves Bacon is a fun book that kids will really enjoy interacting with (especially if your child happens to love bacon). It makes a great bedtime book … and it can also enjoyably be read before breakfast! Treating it as a breakfast book in fact really animates the story and—if parents are okay with it—can lead to children animating their Sunday breakfast foods, letting a strip of bacon act out parts, perhaps even giving voice and offering some sympathy to less revered breakfast foods like eggs and toast.
Wherever it is read, the book truly succeeds in turning a perennially popular food into an interesting character, and a realistically flawed and arrogant anti-hero at that. (Fans of Portlandia might recall a sketch that depicts a down-and-out vegetable PR man enlisting the help of a Bacon representative to help make his veggies more popular). Here, too, in this creative book, Bacon is as self-involved and charming as one might expect bacon to actually be, could it walk and talk. This book offers a great story with charming illustrations that combine to animate the personality of food in new, compelling, and funny ways. Everyone Loves Bacon really sizzles!
Add this book to your collection: Everyone Loves Bacon
Available Here:
About the Author
Kelly DiPucchio likes her bacon well-done, served with two eggs over easy and a side of rye toast. She is an award-winning author of several children’s books, including the New York Times bestsellers Grace for President and The Sandwich Swap. She lives with her husband and three children in southeastern Michigan.
About the Illustrator
Eric Wight will eat just about anything with bacon in it. One of his favorites is maple walnut bacon ice cream. He is the illustrator of the Magic Shop series. Everyone Loves Bacon is his first picture book. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with his bacon-loving wife and children.
Everyone Loves Bacon, by Kelly DiPucchio and Eric Wight, was reviewed by Trevor Jockims. Follow along with our book reviews and articles tagged with Eric Wight, Food, Kelly Dipucchio, Food and Drink, and Humor—as well as our Ages 4-8, and Picture Book categories—to discover more great kids books.