Burpzilla by Tim Miller and Matt Stanton
![cover image](https://www.readplus.com.au/covers/burpzilla.jpg)
ABC Books, 2018. ISBN 9780733339028
(Age: 3+) Recommended. Themes: Burps, Monsters, Humour, Verse. After There's
a monster under my bed who farts (2012) and Dinosaur dump
(2015), amongst many others by the team of Stanton and Miller, comes
a new tale about burps. Each of their books presents a story about
something not usually spoken of, bringing the problem to the
surface, making it acceptable to talk about in an open and very
funny way.
With Burpzilla, the subject of burps is tackled. A group of
mean monsters live at Behemoth Bay, and the worst of these is Frank,
a large green monster with an enormous appetite. Our narrator is a
small red bird whose comments on each page are a neat foil to how
Frank sees himself. When two explorers land on the island with
telescopes and maps, Frank eats them up, and is immediately wracked
with indigestion and belches and burps. He is at a loss, and looks
to his friends to help him out. Mark tries to scare him, Rob tells
him to hold his breath underwater, Sam tells him to drink the lake
dry, all to no avail, and when they decide to call Frank, Burpzilla,
he loses his cool and eats them as well.
Now he sits and waits on the shore of the bay waiting for more food
to drop by, burping all the while.
In easily read rhyming stanzas, the fun is infectious and readers
will love it read out loud to them predicting the rhyming words at
the ends of the lines. I can see groups of children learning parts
of it to call out with the teacher, and learning that burping and
belching are part of the process of eating and digesting food,
although there are ways to be polite about it.
Fran Knight