Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE PANCAKE by Anita Lobel

THE PANCAKE

By

Pub Date: March 20th, 1978
Publisher: Greenwillow

This first cousin to ""The Gingerbread Boy"" begins with a woman cooking a pancake for her seven hungry children. But before she can serve it, ""it jumped out of the pan and rolled like a wheel through the door and onto the road""--evading a farmer, a goose, a cat, a sheep, and a goat, but succumbing midstream to a crafty. . . pig. (Gotcha!) Lobel's appended happy ending has the woman inviting all the frustrated pursuers home for a fresh pancake (""the best she had ever made"") and, another surprise, the farmer washing up while the others romp outdoors. Her people's billowing costumes and arm-waving postures make for some suitably frantic chase scenes (while the animals, in contrast, have a droll, speculative look), and certainly the repetition that is part of the old tale's fun suits the purpose of an easy reader.