The Clay Boy

By Mirra Ginsburg http://www.eduplace.com/kids/tnc/mtai/ginsburg.html
Illustrated by Joseph A Smithhttp://josasmith.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=5617&Akey=QSH5QVDH
2007, Greenwillow Books, New York
Adapted from a from a Russian folktale.
Annotation
A lonely elderly couple create a little clay boy to care for. When the Clay Boy becomes a hungry moving creature it eats them out of house and home and soon eats them and everything in his sight while growing bigger and hungrier.

Personal Reation
I love it when a horror movie is hidden within a childrens picture book, don't you? How terrible, a clay boy growing bigger and bigger the more people and animals he eats; an unsatisfied growing clay monster! The illustrations in this are really sweet, all except the monstrous Clay Boy with its open wide swallowing monster mouth. I can't tell if the author is just playing a trick on us, trying to make us think this is a sweet story, and all along knowing the Clay illustration and the shear theme of the story is wonderfully disgusting. I hope this book haunts the youngest and thrills the oldest youth. Older youth could create an entire monster movie or play around it by acting it out and possibly filming it. I know when I read this aloud, there is not a peep out of even my loudest most obnoxious class.

Russian Folklore
Children's Core Collection