John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway, The Giant Jam Sandwich. Illustrated by John Vernon Lord. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.
Like Pearl Moscowiz's Last Stand, The Giant Jam Sandwich explores the conjunction of food and politics. Here, the village of Itching Down is invaded by four million wasps. What to do? The villagers hold a meeting in the village hall to debate the possibilities. "Then Bap the Baker leaped to his feet/And cried 'What do wasps like best to eat?/Strawberry jam! Now wait a minute!/If we made a giant sandwich we could trap them in it!'" And so they go to work. Following its engagement in democratic processes, the village becomes a model of collaboration: the villagers make an enormous loaf of bread, and then use dump trucks to unload butter and jam onto the huge slices of bread. The wasps--all four million of them--do indeed smell the jam, and dive into it, only to become stuck there. And then they are truly sandwiched, and the sandwich removed from Itching Down, "which is not a waspish sort of town".
A masterwork of hyperbole, this book provokes laughter--and thoughtful consideration about our relationship with pests, and how to resolve them.
Comments