{"id":83114,"date":"2015-02-26T16:57:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T21:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=83114"},"modified":"2015-02-26T16:57:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T21:57:18","slug":"the-junket-eater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/26\/the-junket-eater\/","title":{"rendered":"The Junket-Eater"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"junket\"<\/a>

An illustration from Junket Is Nice.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

New York Review Children\u2019s Classics has reissued so many wonderful forgotten texts: novels and picture books and nursery rhymes and even the occasional cookbook. But for my money, none is weirder than Dorothy Kunhardt\u2019s 1933\u00a0Junket Is Nice<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The prolific\u00a0Kunhardt is best known for Pat the Bunny<\/em>, but long before Daddy\u2019s scratchy face was even a twinkle in her eye, the author was animating a far more sinister beard: that of the mysterious Junket-Eater. The plot of Junket Is Nice<\/em> is as follows: a fat man with a Rasputin-like red beard sits at a table consuming a massive bowl of junket (\u201ca delicious custard and a lovely dessert\u201d). This intrigues everyone; the people come running to view the spectacle. Between gulps, the Junket-Eater challenges the populace to guess why, precisely, he is eating this enormous bowl of junket. They put forth ever-sillier hypotheses, to which the Junket-Eater screams, \u201cWRONG!<\/small>\u201d for all the world like a red-bearded John McLaughlin. And then a little boy stands up and tells truth to power: \u201cJUNKET IS NICE<\/small>.\u201d For which effort he receives SOMETHING NICE<\/small>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I first encountered this book in the home of my best friend\u2019s grandmother (she also had a dollhouse inhabited by anthropomorphic mice and a videotape of Guys and Dolls<\/em>), I was fascinated but confused. Back in the thirties, junket was a standard part of any kiddie diet, presumably, but by the eighties it was already recherch\u00e9 enough to figure in Jane and Michael Stern\u2019s nostalgic Square Meals<\/em><\/a><\/em>. In the \u201cNursery Food\u201d chapter, they write, \u201cJunket is the meekest of foods, beloved by infants and invalids \u2026 Made of rennet, its magic is that it congeals milk into soft custard of the loveliest pastel hues.\u201d It must be beloved to someone; you can still find the red-and-white JUNKET boxes in most gelatin sections, if you look for it. The picture on the book\u2019s cover doesn\u2019t exactly inspire the sort of Brobdingnagian gluttony recounted in the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the eponymous pudding that captures the child imagination. Part of the book\u2019s appeal comes from the fact that it\u2019s a kid who bests the adults with his basic understanding of the value of dessert\u2014but what really shines is the existential nature of the parable. The Junket-Eater is pretty obviously God, or at least the equivalent in his universe; he\u2019s also sort of Rumplestiltskin-ish and evil. Kids may dream of glutting themselves on sweets, but when an adult does it, it\u2019s vaguely disquieting. Not least when the grownup in question is consuming a massive pile of baby food. But, as the book would doubtless instruct us, don\u2019t overthink it.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Review Children\u2019s Classics has reissued so many wonderful forgotten texts: novels and picture books and nursery rhymes and even the occasional cookbook. But for my money, none is weirder than Dorothy Kunhardt\u2019s 1933\u00a0Junket Is Nice. The prolific\u00a0Kunhardt is best known for Pat the Bunny, but long before Daddy\u2019s scratchy face was even a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[17,189,3618,17192,17193,11382,115,17191,17194,15573],"class_list":["post-83114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-books","tag-children","tag-childrens-books","tag-dessert","tag-dorothy-kunhardt","tag-eating","tag-food","tag-junket","tag-junket-is-nice","tag-young-readers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy \u201cJunket Is Nice\u201d Is One of the Weirdest Children\u2019s Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dorothy Kunhardt\u2019s 1933 \u201cJunket Is Nice\u201d is a classic\u2014a very, very strange classic...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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