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LOVE FROM AUNT BETTY by Nancy Winslow Parker

LOVE FROM AUNT BETTY

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Pub Date: April 25th, 1983
Publisher: Dodd, Mead

Parker's Love from Uncle Clyde (1977) showed Charlie coping with a hippopotamus while the text, consisting of Uncle Clyde's letter, expounds blandly on the pet he's sending for Charlie's birthday. Now Clyde's wife Aunt Betty sends Charlie a recipe for chocolate cake along with the bottle of dried Carpathian tree-toad flakes she has found with the recipe in her basement. Except for the tree toads and ""one large cobweb,"" the recipe's ingredients and directions are unremarkable, but what comes out of the oven is a giant one-horned toad. Charlie whacks the monster on the head with a hammer, whereupon it blows up, discharging goodies (cupcake, candy cane), then somehow--WHOOSH PSSST SPLAT--re-forms as a four-tiered, candle-topped cake. The whole joke is a little more contrived than in the Uncle Clyde book.