Last night I was having a chat with a colleague about representations of vegetarianism and vegetarians in fiction. To my shame, I couldn’t think of many potent examples in children’s literature of this. My instincts went to somebody like Richard Adams and Plague Dogs / Watership Down (which I have just reread btw, and am a bit entranced by how thickly layered and robust and dreamlike a story it is) and George Orwell and Animal Farm, but that was about it. So. I threw the question out on Twitter….and collated the responses below.
Thanks so much if you helped! More suggestions welcome!
- Eustace Scrubb’s family from the Chronicles of Narnia, and Annie Whitman’s stepsister from the SVH books (Thanks @actuallyaisha)
- Suzy Austin in Meet the Austins (Thanks @conmartin)
- Possibly Emerence’s parents from the Chalet School series (thanks @lavender_75)
- Nanny Fox by Georgie Adams (Thanks @flissjohnston)
- The parents in Groosham Grange by Anthony Horowitz (Thanks @thehiorns and 8yr old)
- Olga da Polga (thanks @thornflowers)
- Willow Chance in Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan (thanks @lauramainellen)
- Possibly Caddy in Caddy’s World / Weetzie Bat (thanks @effjayem)
- Winni Allfours by Babette Cole (thanks @suzannebarton0)
- Vlad the Drac by Anne Jungman (thanks @tamsincooke1)
- Draculaura in the Monster High books (thanks @lbkidsuk)
- Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli (thanks @fionanoblebooks)
- Mia from the Princess diaries books by Meg Cabot (thanks @conmartin)
- Scarlet McCall in The Scarlet Files : Cat Burglar (thanks @tamsincooke1)
- Herb the Vegetarian Dragon by Jules Bass (thanks @damyantipatel)
- Vera the vegetarian vampire in Vanishing Trick by Ros Asquith (thanks @rosasquith)
- T-Veg : The Tale of the Carrot Crunching Dinosaur by Smriti Prasadam – Halls (thanks @potternicky)
- Medwyn from Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series (Thanks @konallis)
- Gemma from Cowgirl by GR Gemin (thanks @konallis)
- Tyrannosaurus Drip by Julia Donaldson (thanks @mrsdebspatters)
- Plague 99 by Jean Ure (thanks @huskyteer)
- And finally, thanks @272BookFaith for the excellent suggestion below 🙂
Daisy May Johnson 