My Little Sister Hugged an Ape » (Reprint)

Bill Grossman worked as a gravedigger, forklift operator, computer engineer, and third-grade teacher before he began writing books for children, including the enormously successful My Little Sister Ate One Hare. He is now a professor of engineering. The author lives in Connecticut.

Kevin Hawkes is the illustrator of many celebrated books for children, including Weslandia and And to Think That We Thought That We’d Never Be Friends. Kevin Hawkes lives in Maine.


From the Hardcover edition.

A B C D E F G

H I J K L M N O P

My sister’s on a hugging spree!

Hugging her way from A to Z.

Wild animals don’t scare Little Sister. And to show how much she likes them, she’s going to hug them all, from an Ape to a Zebra, whether they like it or not! A newt, an octopus, a porcupine . . . it’s a slimy, slippery, prickly situation. What will
Little Sister hug next? And what kind of trouble will those hugs get her into?

With riotously revolting rhymes by Bill Grossman and hysterically funny art by Kevin Hawkes, kids will be laughing their way from A to Z . . . until all the animals are scared away and there’s only one person left to hug!

Praise for My Little Sister Ate One Hare:

H “A guaranteed success with the primary-grade crowd. . . . Bravo!"—School Library Journal, Starred

“A boisterous evocation of fun and wonder.”—The New York Times


From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

The creators of My Little Sister Ate One Hare here turn their attention from counting to the alphabet, echoing the playfully off-color humor of that earlier collaboration. In rollicking rhymed couplets, the camera-toting young narrator chronicles his wide-eyed sister's "hugging spree," describing her affectionate antics with a menagerie of critters from ape to zebra. More often than not, the demonstrative girl's encounters yield comically calamitous consequences, as when "My little sister hugged an eel./ She liked its slippery, slimy feel./ It tied itself up in a long, icky knot/ And hung from her nose like a big glob of snot." In other ill-fated embraces, a hog lands on top of her in "soft, gooey mud," she falls out of a kangaroo's pouch into a pricker bush and an umbrella bird lays an egg that "broke into pieces and ran down her leg." Offering some drolly-skewed perspectives, Hawkes's vividly hued, energetic illustrations match the appealing goofiness of the narrative (youngsters can almost smell the skunk's scent from the visual representation of its effects). This fanciful frolic through the alphabet gives youngsters words and images aplenty to chuckle over. Ages 5-8. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.