"More Dung! A Beetle Tale" by Frank Weber
Review by Hannah White, Senior Library Assistant, Children's Programmer at Central Library
“More Dung!” by Frank Weber is without a doubt one of the best allegorical picture books I’ve encountered in a long time. Touted as a tale of greed and contentment, it’s very easy to apply the lessons learned to the children in your life, but it’s also a brilliant depiction of billionaires and the greed of capitalism. Hoarding wealth is crap, quite literally in this story, so stop reading now if you’re poop-averse.
"More Dung!" opens with a dung beetle starting his day, waiting for an elephant to drop its daily constitutional on him before he goes about his usual task of rolling it up and fighting rival beetles to protect his delicious doodoo. As the dung beetle rolls his fecal fortunes up the hill, he encounters a snow leopard that tells him he works too hard for so little pay off! Maybe he should try the dairy farm down in the valley. It’s at the farm where our tiny hero hits the payload with a crapola of crap.
Just as every billionaire has done in the history of our planet, the dung beetle gets a brilliant idea: he hires workers to make him richer! Unlike what seems to happen in real life, the dung beetle’s dung pile collapses on him, and he learns a pretty important lesson on greed. Capitalism is a pretty hefty topic to discuss with your kids, but we're seeing the disparity in wealth grow, and our children are seeing it in their classrooms.
This story is a great opener on the topic, and it has the bonus of being about poop (always a crowd-pleaser!) I’m so impressed by this debut picture book’s ability to craft a tale with a clear moral while still keeping it really fun. The illustrations are muted in colour but packed with captivating characters and hidden symbols for the very observant. There are also bonus facts about dung beetles in the last pages for the science-minded. If you’re looking for a book for the whole family, this one is a winner!