Rotten Island
William Steig 1984
Bursting with color and comedy and tragedy, Steig's story seems alive on the pages. He depicts an island filled with absolute rottenness- from the terrible monsters on the land and air and sea, to the horrific weather with "an earthquake an hour, black tornadoes, lightning sprees with racking thunder, squalls, cyclones, and dust storms. At night it froze; all the living things stopped moving and turned to ice." The island is covered with volcanoes and hot lava and sharp gravel. Each page is comically worse and worse and the pictures are fantastic! One day, a small thing of beauty occurs and changes the island forever. The story almost feels too allegorical to be a children's book, but children will definitely delight in the over-the-top depictions of the horrible island life.
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