Fed Up!: A Feast of Frazzled Foods

Beginning with ""Anxious Apples"" who stand beside a lunchbox, contemplating an apple core, this edgy alphabet book's veggie stars are a worried lot. A ""Tomato in Trouble"" anticipates being squashed by a boot, two ""Exiting Eggs"" watch in alarm as a third egg sizzles in a pan and, like a crowd of protesters, ""Objecting Oranges"" face down a juicer. A woe-is-me cabbage sobs over a plastic container of cole slaw; a dueling lemon and lime give new meaning to the expression ""food fight."" Barron's (Eggbert the Slightly Cracked Egg) acrylic wash and colored pencil illustrations are full of good humor and verve. A number of jokes may require the appreciation of older readers: understanding the wit or significance of ""Dills [that] Debate Destiny"" and a ""Zen Zucchini"" meditating in a Japanese garden, for instance, may be beyond the very young. But those ready to graduate from the vegetable vagaries of Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers's How Are You Peeling? will find plenty of food for thought here--and the portrait of the ""Potatoes [that] Ponder Politics"" as they lounge on a couch and watch two ""Quarreling Quinces"" debate on TV is a satirical gem. All ages. (Oct.)