#90 of 1001 · October 29, 2020

We’re one day closer to Halloween, and I'm having a high old time reading Ben Shecter’s The Big Stew. In this deceptively complex story, with text restricted to dialogue, a couple prepares dinner in the kitchen, eagerly dropping ingredients into their large, black cauldron. The more they add, the more maniacally they work, until their monstrous appetites transform them into witches. The soot-tinged drawings veer from cozy to grotesque, the kitchen setting shifting to an abstract orange realm as the fiendish cooks begin gleefully dumping vermin into their diabolical concoction. By externalizing his characters’ profligacy, the author subtly interrogates the human capacity for excess. If we overindulge and give way to our base instincts, he asks, might our own inner witches emerge? #stew #witch #witches #cauldron #halloween #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbook #beautifulbooks #beautifulbookcover #beautifulbookcovers #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks