Childrens Book Big Blue Robot That Eats Junk

July 13, 2022 Post a Comment

Many kids grow up with an aversion to certain vegetables, but I can recall the exact moment my disdain for Brussels sprouts turned into a full-fledged fear.

It started with good intentions. At the bookstore, my mother spotted The Killer Brussels Sprouts, a charming-looking children's book that came with an inlaid cassette tape. In the eyes of a parent, it seemed innocent enough: on the cover, a scrawny boy stood at the top of a flight of stairs, a sea of pseudo-menacing vegetables below him. It was clearly silly, a mock-scary story featuring perhaps the least threatening villain of all time: produce. How frightening could leafy greens actually be?

Eagerly, my brother and I popped the book-on-tape cassette in our boombox. After kicking off with the jarring first few bars of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" (the spooky organ music most people associate with Dracula), the story unfolds as follows: 10-year-old Benjamin, who is afraid of the dark, is directed by his father to clean the basement. Benjamin finally works up the guts to descend...and, to his horror, is met with legions of bloodthirsty Brussels sprouts with outstretched scarlet tongues lolling over razor-sharp fangs. After a few near-misses, Benjamin finally subdues the army by dousing them in mayonnaise and threatening them with a deep-fat fryer. The sprouts flee. But at the book's conclusion, a few green menaces are left unscathed and scurrying within the shadows, their fate—and Benjamin's—left to our imagination.

I was terrified. My brother, three years older than me and already an expert troll, was delighted with the possibilities. Over the next year or so, he tormented me in various ways, even meticulously constructing his own version of anthropomorphized homicidal sprouts, with toothpicks for teeth and holly berries for eyes, to hide around my bedroom. As for my mother, who had only wanted to treat us to a fun new book? Any hope of convincing me to eat this veggie was now shot.

This sudden fear didn't make sense. I was a kid who eagerly gobbled up the entirety of the Goosebumps series and thrilled to the ghastly illustrations in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark—why had such a goofy book manifested a real paranoia?

Coincidentally, the man who catalyzed my sprouts phobia knows the answer. A quick Google search revealed that, in addition to his stint as a writer of children's books, including The Killer Brussels Sprouts, author Kendall Haven has spent years researching and writing about the cognitive effects of narrative, even studying the brain's response to storytelling in FMRI and EEG labs. The connection was too serendipitous to ignore. So I called him.

You couldn't have paid me to eat this as a child, no matter how much bacon you put on it.

Photo by Alex Lau

On the phone, I asked Haven what makes a story stick with people like this story has stuck with me. A character who we identify with who faces and overcomes high stakes is key, says Haven, as well as lots of detailed imagery. "And if those images link to moments of stress, moments where a character faces risk and danger," he says, "then it tends to have a more powerful effect." That explains why I can still recite Haven's description of the book's villains, word for word: "Little red beady eyes, long tongues drooling over sharp incisors, little round, green leafy bodies… they weren't human, they were Brussels sprouts. Killer brussels sprouts."

Bone-chilling.

Even more curious is that this story not only camped out in my brain—it affected my palate, too. I wouldn't eat Brussel sprouts for years, only finally coming around on the veg as an adult. And it's not the only example of a kid's story acting as a formative moment in shaping taste preferences: just look at our cultural fixation with Turkish delight, courtesy of C.S. Lewis. (Or, for The Land Before Time fans, two words: tree star.)

"If you start to identify with a character as they're struggling, without even knowing it, you start to adopt some of their attitudes, beliefs, or values as your own," Haven says. Perhaps even long after the story itself ends, he adds.

Contrary to what I (or one of the book's loquacious Amazon reviewers) might believe, it wasn't Haven's intent to indoctrinate impressionable youths against Brussels sprouts—though he does admit that he's not a fan. ("I still think Brussels sprout farmers have to be the most sadistic people on Earth," he jokes.) Even though only 25,000 copies of the book were printed, Haven still hears from people about it: nostalgic fans searching for a copy, mothers jokingly (or perhaps not-so-jokingly) chiding Haven for upsetting the peace in their home kitchens, and people like me, wondering whether the book had left anyone else with a lingering fear of cruciferous vegetables. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

A couple of decades later, sprouts no longer imbue me with terror—in fact, I prepare and eat them pretty regularly, which seems like progress. Just this past weekend, I planted four Brussels sprouts seedlings in my backyard raised bed. They're not easy to cultivate in the hot, humid South, but I'm hopeful that I'll get to watch them grow into their curiously alien-like stalk forms. If they do, I plan to enjoy them roasted in a cast-iron skillet with some oil and balsamic. I may even try frying them, as long as they don't have any teeth.

Photo of CHILE MARINATED PORK WITH VIETNAMESE BRUSSELS SPROUTS.