Another one of my favorite books from my childhood was the supremely entertaining How To Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell, and illustrated by Emily McCully.
The story begins with a boy named Tom relating how he got sent to his room the previous night because he wouldn’t eat his Salmon dinner. When they find out he wouldn’t even try one bite, his friend Billy states that he’d try a bite of anything before he’d get sent up to bed.
“What about worms?” asks another boy, Alan who becomes the protagonist in the story.
“Sure”, says Billy. “Worms are just dirt, anyway”. So one thing leads to another, and before you know it, Alan has bet Billy fifty dollars that he can’t eat one worm a day for fifteen days.
The story is more or less centered around the new and creative ways to prepare the worms to make them appetizing (hence the title), but the thing that I really loved about the writing was the way each chapter built up little by little, as each day went by and another worm got consumed, you started feeling the desperation building up in Alan as the prospect of having to pay off a silly bet became more and more a of a possibility!
When Alan first dares Billy to eat the worms, it is CLEARLY nothing more than an off-the-cuff comment that he doesn’t expect to get too far: all he’s trying to do initiially is show up Billy for saying worms can be eaten with no big fuss. Then it becomes an issue, and the bet is formally made.
The four boys are divided into two teams- Alan and Joe against worm eater Billy and Tom. Tom is practical about the situation, and is the one who initially begins preparing the worms as fancy meals rather than the disgusting worms they are. "With Ketchup, Mustard or Cream Sauce, Worms can be good!"
After Billy’s eaten the first worm and has shown he’s neither sick nor scared to eat more, it stops becoming a statement of whether Alan thinks Billy CAN eat the worms, but rather how to MAKE HIM STOP, and that’s when things start getting good! He begins trying every underhanded scheme to get Billy to lose the bet.
Psychological Ploy: The first thing Joe and Alan try to do is make subtle hints that they’ve heard worms are poisonous. They create elaborate tales of people dying from eating worms, and even fake a letter from the family doctor stressing the danger of consuming night crawlers, but Tom reassures Billy that they’re fibbing. A call to the doctor by both Billy’s Father AND Mother puts his doubts to rest, and he devours the worms wholeheartedly after that!
Overload Ploy: The conniving duo try to make Billy give up by the sheer size of the current worm they’ve prepared for him. After scraping off the cornmeal, Billy is incensed to find that they’ve glues TWO worms together!
Diversion ploy: Joe and Alan pretend to make peace with Billy, and take him to see the Mets for an all-day event. Secretly they are planning to make Billy forget about eating a worm that day- they reason that even if he DOES remember, he’s not likely to find one at Shea Stadium! They make sure Tom, Billy’s voice of reason, isn’t invited on the trip just to be on the safe side. But after the long exhausting day, as he's just about ready to fall asleep, Billy remembers! He panics-it’s 15 minutes before midnight! If he doesn’t find and eat a worm soon, he’ll lose the bet! He runs to Tom’s and they race around with flashlights to find a worm, then run to Alan and Joe’s to wake everyone up so they witness Billy downing the worm!
When all Alan and Joe’s sneaky plots fail, finally, in an explosive end, they resort to Physical Violence!
It’s come down to the brass tacks, and there isn’t any other lie or deception Alan can do to prevent Billy from eating the final worm and winning the bet, so just as Billy is about to down the last worm, Alan tackles him and locks him in a closet, making such a brawl that the parents intervene- Billy is sent to his room before he’s had a chance to finish eating the last worm!
Alan and Joe think they’ve finally found a way to prevent Billy from winning the bet, but Tom has other plans! Using a diversion, he gets his little brother to sneak Billy the final worm by throwing it up into his bedroom window in a basket. Joe and Alan come racing out, but It’s too late, and Billy gulps the worm down raw! Everyone is so excited about the victory, even Billy’s mom has to laugh!
Epilogue:
The ending to this nifty little story is so great: we see the boys a few days later, and they are admiring the motorbike Billy has bought with the money he won from the bet, and all is good. Then Tom asks what kind of sandwich Billy’s eating for lunch, and he finds it’s…yep! WORMS!
