This is a favorite in our house!
A story about learning self-control, trying new things, and about how difficult it is to make friends if you are always eating potential friends.
Little Penelope Rex is nervous about her first day at school.
What if her classmates had more teeth than she had?!
Her father packed her a filling and nutritional meal of three hundred tuna sandwiches and one apple juice.
To Penelope's great shock, her classmates were CHILDREN.
You might not be able to see, but there is the cutest little double decker reading area over there in the top right hand corner. I covet one of those for my library.
Penelope did what T-Rexes do and ate those children up.
Mrs. Noodleman wasn't standing for that nonsense.
Everyone is covered in dinosaur spit which is not a particularly auspicious beginning.
I adore the skinny little girl at the front there shaking her fist at Penelope. She is who I want to be when I grow up.
Penelope tries to make friends, but somehow, her efforts don't seem to inspire friendship in her classmates.
She shares her friend difficulties with her father
"Penelope Rex," her father asked, "did you eat your classmates?"
"Well...maybe sort of just a little bit."
Penelope's father shares wisdom with her--
"Children are just like us on the inside. Just tastier."
The next day, Penelope tried. But William Omoto was irresistibly delicious looking.
Giving up on human, Penelope tries to make friends with Walter the classroom pet.
Walter tries to eat Penelope, giving her a taste of her own treatment.
Penelope learns compassion through her own brush with someone trying to eat her.
She stopped eating her classmates....
(Even when Cece Woodman spilled BBQ sauce all over herlself)
And if she is ever tempted to forget, she can just look at Walter licking his lips and remember.
