Willard is a master storyteller, never more so than in this many-layered fable. Guido and Maria, a baker and his wife, live in the city of Florence, but can scarcely make enough money to live from day to day. Maria asks for a bed for her birthday, and Guido finds one, in an odd shop. It’s a gorgeous bed, with apples and lilies and three laughing children’s faces carved on it. Their first night in the new bed, it dances out the window. It brings the couple across the sky to the master baker, who bakes in crystal ovens, gives them a bag of yeast and cautions them to tell no one. When they use it in their baking, no one can resist, and they are successful until an elegant stranger wants to pay for their secret. Guido ignores the warning of the master baker and sells some of the yeast for a huge sum that turns out to be counterfeit. But Maria releases the bed once again, and she flies home with gifts even more magical than the yeast. Thompson paints the city of Florence in a stunning, hard-edged magical photo-realism: The master baker, Guido and Maria are as real as portraits. Willard plays with rhythm and repetition, and leaves much understated or unsaid, but offers a wondrous story for older readers that can be read repeatedly with both joy and longing. (Picture book. 7-12)
