The Incredible Book Eating Boy By Oliver Jeffers

Henry loved books but not like you and I love book, no. Not quite.....
Henry loved to EAT books.

It all began quite by accident one afternoon when he wasn't paying attention.
He wasn't sure at first and tried eating a single word just to test.
Next, he tried a whole sentence and then the whole page.
Yes, Henry definitely liked them.
By Wednesday, he had eaten a WHOLE book.
And by the end of the month he could eat a whole book in one go.

Henry loved eating all sorts of books: story books, dictionaries, atlases, joke books, books of facts, even maths books.
but red ones were his favourite.
and he was going through them at a fierce rate.

But here is the best bit: the more he ate, the smarter he got.
He ate a book about goldfish and then he knew what to feed ginger.
Before long he could do his fathers' crossword in the newspaper,
and he was even smarter than his teacher in school.

Henry loved being smart.
He though that if he kept going,
he might even become the SMARTEST person on Earth.

So he kept eating books and he kept getting smarter and smarter and smarter.
He went from eating books whole to eating them three or four at a time.
Book about anything and he wanted to know it all.

But then things started going not quite so well.
In fact, they started going very, very, wrong.
Henry was eating too many books and too quickly at that.
He was beginning to feel a little ill.

But here is the worst bit.
Everything he was learning was getting mixed up,
he didn't have....he didn't have time to digest it properly.
It became quite embarrassing for him to speak.
Suddenly Henry didn't feel very smart at all.

More than one person told him he should stop eating books.
So Henry gave up eating books and sat sadly for a long time.
What was he to do?

Then after a while and almost by accident Henry picked up a half-eaten book from the floor....
but instead of putting it in his mouth....
Henry opened it up..,,
and began to read and it was SO good.

Henry discovered that he loved to read and he thought that if he read enough he might still become the smartest person on Earth.
It would just take a bit longer.

Now Henry reads all the time,

Although every now and then....