The Scourge of Consumerism

Everyone should be reading Elise Gravel stories to their children. They are brilliantly non-traditional, completely silly and so much fun to read.

In The Wrench, Bob breaks his tricycle and needs a wrench to fix it. When he can’t find his he heads to MegaMart to get a new one and of course is sold on a million other things he doesn’t need except the wrench.

Elise Gravel’s illustrations are wildly unusual and incredibly appealing. You and your reader will laugh and laugh as you make your way through this silly story.  The best part about The Wrench is although it’s quite a silly story there is a definite message about consumerism within the pages and teachers could bring this book into the classroom when discussing media literacy, putting an outrageous spin on the topic to really get the point of overconsumption across to young people.  

For those who are dual language learners, great news as this book was originally published in french under the title La clé à molette and was awarded the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature - Illustration, french titles.