BAKE LIKE MOMMY

A child “helps” Mommy in the kitchen.

The first-person text is narrated by a child whose feminine clothing and hairstyle suggest she is a girl and recounts her delighted efforts to bake with her mother. These efforts, however, seem more likely to cause consternation than pleasure, but the mother’s reactions to her daughter’s spilling sprinkles on the floor, pouring milk into many more cups than needed for pancakes, and blowing a tower of paper muffin cups across the table, among other things, never appear on the page. Instead, each spread over the course of a week features the girl’s antics in the kitchen, resulting in a list of sorts: brownies on Tuesday, meringues on Thursday, a Swiss roll on Friday, etc. Playful, descriptive language and the naïve, faux printmaking style of the digital art create an engaging tone: “When [the Swiss roll] was cooked, we slathered it with cream and Mommy rolled it up. Then all the cream OOOOzed out of the end. It looked like a roly-poly sausage.” Still, the book has just about as much substance as one of the pair’s meringues, and readers may find themselves wishing for more of a story to sink their teeth into. Both mother and daughter appear white.

Half-baked—but sweet nonetheless.