Mean Soup Big Book
by Betsy Everitt Horace has had a bad day--including getting stepped on by a show-and-tell cow and riding home with Miss Pearl, who nearly kills three poodles on the way. He feels mean, so his sympathetic mother suggests that they make soup. She salts a pot of boiling water and then they take turns screaming into it and sticking their tongues out at it. Horace also bangs a spoon on the side of the pot while it boils on the stove (an unsafe practice) and, in a jarring departure from realism, he breathes ``his best dragon breath,'' at which point flames emerge from his mouth. At last Horace smiles. 32 pages.

Grade Level: K, 1, 2, 3, 4