Alvie eats soup. That's it. No swapping, no sampling. Just soup. Alvie's parents are at their wits' end. And then it gets worse. Granny Francesca, Alvie's famous gourmet granny is coming to town. She's a chef extraordinaire! What will she think? What will she say? The boy only eats soup? This visit could be the icing on the...minestrone! Until Alvie discovers that his gourmet granny is more like him than his parents realise...

Winner of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book Award

"Alvie Eats Soup is Ross Collins's best picture book yet. There isn't an illustrator in Britain who uses a more intelligent visual storytelling language; Collins somehow manages to combine the cosy stasis of Maxfield Parrish with a dynamic modernist angularity and make his books warm, child-friendly, and hip. Surreal domestic settings, unique visual metaphors, and pathos are essential ingredients of this remarkably nutritious book." TES

"Just the book to give a child the appetite for reading. Open the book and enjoy the sustained nourishment from title page to final frame... visual continuity between the words and pictures blended to perfection. Collins has created a genuinely humorous picture book, robust as the mulligatawny soup for which he supplies the recipe." School Librarian

"Collins has a whimsical attitude that shines through on every page and in every illustration." Press Telegram

"This zany book is sure to delight picky eaters everywhere." School Library Journal

"In pencil, watercolour and acrylic compositions as meticulous as Alvie, Collins lavishes attention on the angular character's dramatic gestures, pointy tufts of hair and fashionably rumpled clothes. His illustrations hearken back to early 20th century comics." Publishers Weekly

"A surefire recipe for chuckles." Kirkus Reviews

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No illustration to be used without the permission of Ross Collins or the publisher.

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