The Books

The Runaway Dinner

by Alan Ahlberg
Illustrated by Bruce Ingman

One Potato Review

Jailbreak. A sausage named Melvin gets up in the middle of dinner and runs away, joined shortly by a knife, a fork, three peas named Peter, Percival and Paul, and french fries (among them Fifi and Francois) who finally escape in a boat. Percival and Paul end up getting devoured by different herbivores in the park, but Peter – well, you’ll have to see, and as for the fate of the instigator, Melvin, there is also a great deal of suspense about his final reckoning. This isn’t quite as traumatic as it sounds, but it is just as funny. The author and illustrator don’t seem to know exactly where they’re going when they set out, which is as it should be here. Breathless and cheerful, no lessons implied.