Welcome to a special post featuring award-winning author and illustrator Christopher Silas Neal and his latest picture book, I Won’t Eat That! Please read on for a closer look at I Won’t Eat That as well as a bonus Author-Illustrator Insight section with some interesting facts and notes from the author himself!

Christopher Silas Neal has worked on such fantastic and well-reviewed picture books like Over and Under the Pond, Over and Under the Snow (written by Kate Messner) and Everyone. His latest picture book I Won’t Eat That is a vibrantly illustrated and entertaining story about a cat who is a very picky eater.

As readers dive into I Won’t Eat That, they meet a bright-coloured cat with a rather displeased if not disbelieving expression on his face. Cat explains his predicament: that while he is indeed a cat, he “will NOT eat cat food”. Other animals like dogs and fish, he claims, may eat the food set out for them, but he will not follow. In the next spread we see Cat as he imperiously kicks his bowl of “dry, dull and not very yummy food” out of the way and simultaneously wonders what he will eat…

We then follow Cat as he navigates his way through conversations with multiple animals as he discovers more and MORE things he does not want to eat. For example, as Cat meets Chimp, he finds out that they eat ants…ants that bite! Cat learns that Lion eats zebras, which is just too large of a creature for Cat to contemplate, and Elephants eat grass which is even “MORE BORING than cat food”. Cat begins to look more than despondent as he leaves Whale and his peculiar, hard-to-pronouce meal of bioluminescent phytoplankton…until he meets Mouse and a short conversation about what to eat turns into a rousing and open-ended finale.

Perfect for reading aloud- and likely to be a hit at preschool-age storytimes- I Won’t Eat That is an enjoyable, amusing read that builds and betters on the basic concept of picky eating with great use of repetition, intriguing word choices, and a surprising- exciting!- ending. Neal’s artwork is appealingly bright and natural in this title; strong, vivid, and as always, refined- to perfectly match the tone and flow of the text. I have had the pleasure of reading this title aloud with my own preschool-age child and it’s been requested multiple times since the first reading! Readers who have enjoyed such titles as A Hungry Lion, or A Dwindling Assortment of Animals, Buddy and the Bunnies: In Don’t Play with Your Food, or the work of authors such as Kevin Sherry, Adam Lehrhaupt or Ame Dyckman might especially adore this title.

Author-Illustrator Insight with Christopher Silas Neal!

• When I sold my first book idea (Everyone) to Candlewick they asked if I had any other ideas. I didn’t really have anything but quickly jotted down a few rough sketches and words about a cat who doesn’t like cat food and asks other animals what they eat, and I sent those scribbles to my agent. I ended up getting a two book deal. A deal for Everyone which I had spent a year fine tuning, writing, and sketching, and a deal for what would become I Won’t Eat That which was really just a quick sketch done on the spot.
• The cat in this book is based on my orange tabby named Fabrizio. He’s super picky and has lots of attitude, but he’s also a super lovable mush of a cat.
• The turtle in this book was originally a bird. Then someone pointed out that the cat might want to eat the bird so I changed it to a turtle which also eats worms on occasion, but whose hard shell would be unappetizing to the cat.
• In I Won’t Eat That, we meet many animals who fall prey to a hungry, wild animal. I myself have eaten one of the animals in this book. Can you guess which one?
• I make all of my art in pieces. Everything is done in black and white. I start by creating shapes and silhouettes on one paper. Then textures and details on other papers using paints and brushes and pencils. Each piece or layer is scanned into Photoshop. From there I arrange the pieces and add color on the computer. A single spread will have many, many layers each one made by hand, scanned and then colored on the computer.

Thank you so much for your time, Christopher!

I received a copy of this title courtesy of the author and Candlewick Press in exchange for an honest review and for the purposes of this blog post. Thank you! All opinions and comments regarding the title are my own. Thanks as well to Christopher Silas Neal who provided the information for the Author-Illustrator Insight section.