Never Use a Knife and Fork
by Neil Goddard & Nick Sharratt

Release Date: 7th Mar 2008
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 978 0 2300 1616 3
RRP: £5.99

Stuff, suck, trickle and tread but never use a knife and fork...

We love Nick Sharratt's work as a general rule at TTAB, in fact, some might say that we have a particular fondness for his wonderfully whimsical childishness, but we weren't overly sold on Never Use a Knife and Fork.

For a start, the basic premise of the book is to elaborate on the many wonderful and varied alternative methods to consuming food without resorting to using anything so drab and dull as using a knife and fork; next, it was all over far too quickly, which we found most irritating; and finally, well... there is no finally - that was it.

Shaking our heads in deep sorrow for the loss of an esteemed colleague, we decided to take special measures... we accosted a group of young children, admittedly mostly boys (who would love anything remotely naughty like trickling treacle down your legs), but there were a few girls too and we let them digest the book over a number of weeks. The result was astonishing. Every single child not only remembered the book, but could literally recount verbatim every word!

No, this book will not encourage your children to eat properly using their knife and fork at the dinner table. Yes, it will give them rather disturbing and particularly gross ideas about what to do with their food instead of actually eating it (keeping crisps in your underwear being a distinct favourite). But it will also capture their imaginations, it will fire them up into a frenzy about reading - and if they can be turned on to reading at such a young age, then all the better.

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