Boy Who Ate Words

Gabby's verbal skills have trouble keeping pace with his lightning-fast ideas in this peculiar picture book about communication. Gabby starts out as a ""normal"" boy who plays with toys, likes sweets and asks lots of questions. But soon words ""jumbled together in his mouth"" and ""got tied together in one long string,"" and no one can understand him. To get his ideas across, he creates his own language, and then he starts to ""eat"" words rather than pronounce them intelligibly. One day he stops speaking altogether and learns to communicate in ""cat,"" ""furniture"" and ""ant,"" languages that emphasize movement and different senses. Not until he meets a girl who speaks only ""human"" does Gabby resolve to use human words again. Dedieu's fable, an import from France, may invite some thought-provoking discussion, but the poetic sensibility is an adult one, and is likely to leave the picture-book set scratching their heads. The strict, seemingly unfeeling parents who send Gabby to a ""home"" are also a disturbing element. Dedieu's boldly painted images and innovative use of white space invigorate the large pages here. Striking solid-colored backgrounds and Gabby's depiction in many shapes and forms provide an air of fantasy that complements the text but does not, unfortunately, compensate for its unchildlike tone. Ages 5-up. (May)