The First Slodge

K-Gr 3—"Once upon a slime, there was a Slodge. The first Slodge in the universe." She experiences a myriad of firsts, from seeing the first sunrise to smelling the first flower, until she meets another Slodge. The two fight "the first fight" over a piece of fruit, before getting into trouble with the First Snawk, a monstrous sea creature that wants to eat the First Slodge. After the Second Slodge rescues her from the Snawk, the two Slodges become friends. The story, simultaneously sweet and odd, may leave some readers feeling ambivalent, although the message is sound: "The world didn't belong to anyone. It belonged to everyone. It was there to share." A Slodge, while never fully described or explained in the text, appears in Desmond's airy illustrations as a green, slimy, globular creature, and, by the end of the story, a spread reveals a diverse variety of equally unique creatures that populate the strange, quirky world Willis and Desmond have created. The book concludes on a peculiar note, in which the two Slodges have a host of babies and are no longer the only two Slodges in the universe.