I bought The Beast With a Thousand Teeth because it was written by Terry Jones and I've been a Monty Python's Flying Circus fan for decades.

Although the four-eyed, six-legged, thousand-toothed beast is in the habit of eating humans of all ages, this is not described in a way that should be too scary for very little children.

Our hero is Sam, the small son of a pastry cook in the biggest town of the kingdom. His father must be a great pastry cook because the king is one of his customers (by delivery, of course). Luckily for Sam, he's learned to bake as well as deliver. Otherwise, he'd have been one of the beast's meals and this would be an even shorter book.

How Sam earns the rewards offered for ridding the city and kingdom of the beast was amusing as well as a cautionary tale. ( )