Don't Eat Me! The Almost True Story Of Belladonna
by Kate Finney & Esmé Shapiro (illustrator)
AUCK OUT OF STOCK
WGTN IN STOCK
56
Oct 2025
Hardback
Enchanted Lion Books, LLC
9781592704347
From award-winning illustrator Esmé Shapiro and debut talent Kate Finney comes the unforgettable story of Belladonna, a spunky, beautiful plant who must learn to survive--even though she can't flee from those who want to devour her!
Everyone in the forest knows about Belladonna--that tall, beautiful plant whose berries are so delicious that they're forever being gobbled up. Day after day, poor Belladonna is nibbled at until there's almost nothing left of her. But unlike the animals who can leap, climb, or fly away, Belladonna, being a plant, is firmly rooted in place. So what's a plant to do to survive?
This is the story of how Belladonna learns to harness her own chemical powers to protect herself and her descendants . . . and how she learns from a great cast of plant and animal characters--culminating in a dandy pheasant--that no one ever survives alone.
This one-of-a-kind picture book is gorgeously illustrated by Esmé Shapiro with wit and humor, and has an astonishingly epic framing that carries Belladonna across eons into her final, powerful form!
A fairytale retelling of the evolution of deadly nightshade doesn’t sound like a playful picture book, but Kate Finney and Esme Shapiro have pulled it off in such a charming way. Poor Belladonna, her bell-like magenta flowers and sweet black berries make her a very popular meal for the forest creatures. One day she is nibbled almost to bits, so she seeks advice from the beautifully anthropomorphised Raspberry and Oak, whose thorns and acorns keep them safe and surviving across generations. But it’s the secret of the mushroom and his deadly poisons which gives Belladonna the idea she needs to protect herself. This is a truly stunning introduction to the ideas of evolution and natural selection told in a whimsical fable; full of grasshoppers with tiny teeth, flowers with beautiful eyes and cunning grins, and suavely plumed pheasants who have co-evolved to withstand Belladonna’s poison. It’s all bound up in a stunning hardback with endpapers so beautiful I’d like them to wallpaper little Unity.
Elka, Little Unity
