THE FAIRYTALE CAKE

The text may run to just a few words per page, but the pictures in this heavily populated outing invite lingering as dozens of European nursery rhyme and folktale characters gather to prepare a huge cake, and then wheel it down the road to the house of a lucky birthday boy. Like Carol Jones’s Gingerbread Man (2002), the Jolly Postman series and the like, this becomes a test of cultural literacy, made even more challenging by the lack of identifying commentary: How many of these figures, rendered in Langley’s informal cartoons as young-looking folks and animals in antique costume, are recognizable? Is that the Knave of Hearts? There’s Bo Peep, searching for her sheep on one page, and finding them on the next. That whiskered officer must be the Grand Old Duke of York, and look, there’s the Gingerbread Boy riding one of a trio of little pigs. All gather at last to wish the starry-eyed lad a “Happy, Happy Birthday!” as he makes ready to blow out the candles. With guests like these, how could it be otherwise? (Picture book. 3-5)