Hot Food: Nice!
Michael Rosen and Neal Layton
Walker Books
This is Michael Rosen’s hugely popular poem ‘Hot Food’ to which a prelude has been added wherein the narrator tells readers, “When I was a boy I thought my dad knew everything.’ However the day dawns when a discovery destroys that belief. This is what happens: It’s dinner time and the family – mum, dad, the narrator and his brother are sitting around the kitchen table, plates piled high with dinner. It’s evident to the narrator that the potato’s a tad on the hot side and so with just a small amount on his fork, he blows on it – whooph whooph – ‘until it’s cool, / just cool, / then into the mouth: nice!’ His brother and mum do a similar thing. Dad however acts, let’s say, rather rashly. Into his mouth goes a large amount of potato:
YIKES! You can almost feel the skin inside his mouth blistering in Neal Layton’s scene of Dad as he flaps his hands, blows and puffs and a whole lot more until he ejects the potato in small pieces back onto his plate. His family are obviously dumbfounded, perhaps even more so when he states, “Watch out everybody – the potato’s very hot.”
A paragraph from the publisher at the back of the book includes a couple of amusing facts concerning ‘nice’ the meme in both China and the USA.
Neal Layton’s illustrations capture the potato incident splendidly so it becomes a scrumptious slapstick visual story too, full of fantastic facial expressions. A unmissable read aloud for class and family sharing.
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