Sumo's Souvlaki

Book cover Sumo's souvlaki is eaten by a tiger, at school. He describes the tiger to the teacher who doesn't believe him. There is a surprise ending.

In 18 pages, this Rude Reader sets up Sumo, who at morning play, lunch time and afternoon play loses his souvlaki to a tiger. When his teacher says "No, Tigers don't come to school", Sumo describes the features, using determiner+adj+noun structures "its long tail", "its red tongue". The drawings show the relevant bits of the tiger. Finally, the teacher says, "Tiger's don't like people who tell lies" but finds that maybe this is lie. After school, the tiger appears again and probably eats the teacher - a rude ending depending on your viewpoint. The ending is inferred. Sumo's Souvlaki is nicely scary. There is no blood and gore just souvlaki, a crying kid who actually turns out to be telling the improbable truth and a nice sense of justice. Sumo's Souvlaki uses repetition of syntactic structures to build up the suspense throughout the narrative. Knowing how the narrative ends make the ending makes even more enjoyable.