Ten Fat Sausages

by Michelle Robinson, Tor Freeman (Illustrator)

Overview

Count along in this hilarious rhyming picture book as ten sizzling sausages attempt a daring escape from the frying pan! But with a kitchen full of dangers, will they make it out alive?

Ten fat sausages sizzle in a pan... a place, they realize, where they do not want to be. So they decide to do something daring. Try something new. They're going to make a run for it.

Come on a great escape through the kitchen as we follow each sausage on their journey. Will they succeed? Or will the cat, blender, or fan prove their downfall? Hilarious and merciless, this is a story of underdogs who dare to dream of freedom, and find out along the way... it may not be so easy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524793302
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	04/28/2020
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
Lexile:	480L (what's this?)
File size:	10 MB
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Michelle grew up in Gloucestershire, England, and loved making up stories and being silly. She put that to good use by getting a job as a copywriter, writing more than 6000 radio advertisements before moving on to television and the web. She soon got bored, though, which is when she started writing funny stories for children and their parents to enjoy reading umpteen times. Her picture book There's a Lion in My Cornflakes won the Sainsbury's Children's Book Awards. She lives with her husband, son, and daughter.

Tor grew up in London and graduated from Kingston University with a BA in illustration. She has been working as an illustrator ever since. In 2012 she was awarded the Sendak Fellowship.

Editorial Reviews

02/24/2020

“Ten fat sausages, sizzling in a pan” escape the stovetop for some short-lived freedom in this comedic twist on the predictable nursery rhyme. After the first wide-eyed sausage goes “POP,” revolt begins with sausage two, who interrupts the repeating rhyme: “Hang on a minute! I do not like this... I won’t go BANG and I won’t go POP,” Robinson writes. Instead, “hop, hop, hop,” he dives headfirst into the sink, but the carefree swim is cut short when someone pulls the plug, propelling him “straight down the drain.” His compatriots find that their luck isn’t much better: in Freeman’s colorful, vintage-style art, wiener four meets an unfortunate end in the blender (a nearby apple covers a grape’s eyes), sausage six heads “over the wide-open Freezer Top Ridge”—and straight into the ceiling fan—and sausage eight, grief stricken, catches the eye of a hungry cat (“Oh, drat”). Witnesses to their friends’ gruesome ends, the final two links hatch a different kind of plan, one that successfully results in the stove being switched off. “Might this pair survive?” asks the narrator; the conclusion to this slight, sausage-filled adventure will leave readers gulping. Ages 3–7. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"An infectiously funny countdown book, set to be a read-aloud favourite" - Fiona Noble - The Bookseller

From the Publisher

2019-12-08
An irreverent take on a nursery rhyme.

"Ten fat sausages, sizzling in a pan," starts off this rhyme, replicated in the frontmatter. It's typically sung, useful when trying to keep young children entertained or teaching them to count down by twos. But when the story starts, while one sausage goes "POP," the other doesn't go the expected "BANG," as each even-numbered sausage tries to make their escape, but "tries" is the operative word. One is somehow accidentally blendered along with an extremely concerned green bell pepper, another is eaten by a cat, and so on, until the two remaining sausages band together to make their escape. There's plenty of humor here, mostly carried by Freeman's expressively painted foodstuffs and blocky, realistic scenery—a vintage refrigerator, fast-whirling ceiling fan. Unfortunately, the jaunty rhythm of the original barely translates to picture-book form here, and too often unfortunate readers will have to wrench the scansion or ignore rhyming conventions ("sauce" attempting to rhyme with "course," for example) in order to make it work for storytime. The ending is confusing as well; the sausages limp off outside, far from unscathed, but how they went from "one main course," terrified on buns, to freedom remains a mystery.

This twisted version of a familiar favorite is too inconsistent to satisfy. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews