My boyfriend Matt and I are always trying to get steps closer to becoming vegetarians. For the most part we keep meat free until there’s something really delicious and we lose it. So when I happened to come across this children’s book, by none other than the amazing Henrik Drescher, I had to see what it was about. It focuses around a pudge named Hubert. Pudges are funny looking pig sort of characters with a long nose and horns. Pudges never get to grow up because they are sent to the meat factory run by Farmer Jake to be made into sausages and TV dinners. But then one day Hubert escapes from the factory and runs away to the jungle where he eats and eats and grows and grows. He becomes gigantic (elephants can ride on his back he’s so big) and is able rescue all his fellow pudges from the plant by just lifting off the roof. All the pudges are free and get to grow to their real size too. In the end Farmer Jake promises stops eating pudges, goes to the gym and gets thin and meets his Heidi his trainer who he marries. Farmer Joe and Heidi open a Tofu Hot Dog Company instead and everyone lives happily ever after. I love this story illustrated with really imaginative drawings. The jungle scene is my favorite where the page is filled with crazy looking plants and vines and animals peeping out from behind them. The lines are all drawn in ink but the colors seem to be all done in crayon which I think is a cute and appropriate look. Maybe if I had seen this book as a kid I would have been a vegetarian all along. You can get a copy of this book right here and check out the many other titles of children’s books Henrik has done here. And tomorrow I will finally post the interview with Henrik and pictures of his amazing China Notebooks. See the other books of his I’ve posted about here, here, and here.

© Julia Rothman 2007