How Martha Saved Her Parents from Green Beans

PreS-Gr 2—A hilarious spin on the kid who doesn't like to eat vegetables. Every Tuesday, Martha's family has green beans for dinner, and every Tuesday Martha refuses to eat them. No matter what her parents say, she thinks green beans are bad, and she is proven right one day when a gang of hat-wearing, moustache-sporting, beady-eyed green beans swaggers into town. "Anyone who had ever said, 'Eat your green beans,' was in big, big trouble." The villainous vegetables kidnap Martha's parents, leaving the youngster free to toss her plate of cold green beans out the window and stay up late eating cookies. But a life of total freedom and junk food isn't all that it's cracked up to be, so Martha makes the ultimate sacrifice by rescuing her parents from the beans, using the only means she has… she eats them! Laugh-out-loud illustrations in a palette of saturated colors pit round-faced, red-haired Martha against the tall, thin beans, whose menacing expressions and Western references make them a funny foe. With a wacky premise and a perfect tone, this saga is sure to please vegetable haters everywhere.—Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library