Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 03/01/2013 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 - Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 05/01/2013 Martha’s parents may love green beans, but Martha does not: “Green beans are bad. Very bad.” No one realizes just how bad those beans can be, though, until the day a green bean gang saunters into town: they terrorize old ladies and teachers and kidnap Martha’s parents, holding them hostage. When Martha threatens to eat the wrongdoers, the head bean calls her bluff: “‘You will not eat us,’ he said with an evil sneer. ‘You have never eaten a green bean in your life.’” Martha makes good on her threat, however, and soon puts the beans in their place-in her stomach. Her grateful parents never again serve green beans at meals, preferring to stick to “broccoli or corn on the cob or a nice leafy salad. Everyone knows that there is nothing bad about a nice leafy salad.” The melodramatic humor of this silly story will tickle kids’ funny bones, and youngsters who side with Martha’s views on green beans (or other vegetables) will be particularly satisfied to see their anti-veggie stance justified here. LaRochelle’s text is both picturesque and succinct, a tasty treat to read aloud. Fearing’s digitally rendered art is drolly comic; his figures’ dynamic facial expressions and body positions reflect the story’s goofy, exaggerated tone. Diminutive, ginger-haired Martha stands out among the more muted tones of the background; the stubble-faced, mustachioed, villainous beans are worthy, if lanky, adversaries, and viewers will certainly giggle at the couple of leafy greens peering menacingly from the salad bowl in book’s closing spread. Pair this with Speed’s Brave Potatoes (BCCB 6/00) for a contrasting view of veggies, one terrible, the other triumphant. JH - Copyright 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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