Full Moon Soup

by Alastair Graham

Children will really have to keep their eyes open and their wits about them if they want to see all the weird and wacky goings-on at the Hotel Splendide. That’s because the full moon seems to be having a strange effect on the hotel’s guests and the cook’s preparing slimy green sludge, a painted portrait is being very rude, the maid’s getting sucked up by a vacuum cleaner, and the sausages have grown feet! Every spread provides a deliciously open and comic view of all the hotel’s hijinks, while the rhyming text directs kids’ attention to some of the crazier antics. Young readers will have hours of enjoyment searching the incredibly detailed illustrations.

Genres: Picture Books, Fiction, Childrens, Kids, Fantasy, Humor

32 pages, Hardcover

First published October 7, 1991

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Alastair Graham is a prolific illustrator of children’s books who worked in animation and advertising before beginning a career in illustration. He lives with his wife, Diane, in the English countryside, hemmed in by sheep, CD’s and freshly sawn trees.

Reviews

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow what an incredible book! The illustrations are unbelievable. It took my daughter and I 30 minutes to go through this book and we still didn't finish it. It is a seek and find picture book that tells a story from one page to the next. You are able to see inside the entire hotel at once, from the basement to the attic. In each room someone is doing something, In the kitchen, the chefs are cooking, in the lobby the maids are cleaning, in the attic the handyman is painting, on the roof the couple in love a staring at the moon..etc.. Then you turn the page and something starts to go wrong in each room. The ghosts come out of the attic, the vamipire comes out of his tomb in the cript, new rude guests arrive to the hotel, the handyman is inept. The from each successive page, it gets worse.

It must have taken the illustrator forever to finish drawing this book. It is soooo worth the money. I bought it for $8.95 at barnes and noble and I would certainly buy it again, as a gift, for a child.

[Tom Loock · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favourite books for children of all ages (4-99). Though it has no words (you can ignore those few before and after the story), I have "read" it many times.

It's most enjoyable to read Full Moon Soup together with another person (preferably a child) when you can point out your most recent discovery and then go back and forth to check out how something came about and what happens next.

There is a very hard to find, unfortunately very expensive sequel called Full Moon Afloat: All Aboard for the Craziest Cruise of Your Life! that currently (Dec 2014) sells for £90-180 as a paperback.

[Siskiyou-Suzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a fun book for kids -- not the updated version though, the old version. I want a copy! It's really cool to see the way the book progresses, which each character having their own story on each page. Neat concept, cool execution.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first introduction to wordless picture books! What a hoot! I loved introducing this book to high school English teachers as possible assignment for students to pick a character or incident and expand on it! They loved it! Fun galore for kids and adults alike!

[FallibleReadings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book with incredible illustrations, one of my favourite books growing up. Simply superb!

[Jesse Sprague · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably my favorite children's book discovery since my son's birth. When I bought it I really didn't expect him to like it (he was about 18months old.) Not only did he love it then for all the bright pictures and funny monsters he still loves it and he's almost three. There was a period where this was the only book he would read...I know that a lot of kids do that but mine doesn't. Typically he wants an array of books to repetitively read.

Day after day we would follow different storylines and talk about them. One day we'd talk about Dracula and the mummy and the next we would skip ahead to where the water erupts from the fridge and talk about the polar bear. Sometimes we just watched the pictures come to life or the grumpy maid and the painter. Not only was my son able to stay entertained I was.

[Heidi-Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite what I was thinking for a chili/soup/gumbo Book Time theme. In fact, this book would be terrible for a story time! Absolutely no words. But what an imagination and talent on the part of the creators. A good book for reluctant readers or those more interested in comic-book style. So much happening from one page to the next that it started to make my head spin. A bit of bathroom humor here and there (literally and figuratively). Overall, though, this book is in a realm all its own. Not at all my style or to my liking preference, by all means, but definitely an audience for it exists.

[Vsw · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a one of my student's favorite wordless picture books. On each page the reader encounters a cut-way of a hotel and its surroundings. As the story progresses stranger and stranger events occur in each room, leading to the "Fall of the Hotel Splendide". The fun of the book is in the details--this is a book to pore over!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are no words in this book, each page is just a drawing of the Hotel as time passes on. There is so much to look at, and many different stories are told within each page. It is certainly quite amusing and inventive - some really bonkers things start coming into play. You could read it over several times and still not see everything.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

My seven year old boy just loves this book. There are only pictures, no words, but the pictures tell tons of stories. Every time we look at this book together, we find new bits of the story we didn't notice before. Very fun to look at and good practice for pre readers.

[Axel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book started my love for the library. I must have checked this book out 10 times as a kid. Don't simply read (look through) this book, go and buy a copy for a friend's kid, your own kid, anyone's kid, or simply yourself!

[Jason McIntosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

my favorite picture book as a kid. i recently found it again at the library and enjoyed it even now.

[Iben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gensyn med barndommen.