Robert and the World's Best Cake by Anne-Kathrin Behl. PICTURE BOOK. NorthSouth Books, 2020. $18. 9780735844315.
BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3) - OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
Robert is spending a lazy day off with his dad and decides he wants to invite people over to share the biggest cake ever. They start with making invitations, but the cards are accidentally blown out the window before Robert can deliver them. Nonplussed, Robert and his dad get to work and create a wonderfully large cake. Before they can dive in, the doorbell begins ringing as more and more neighbors and strangers show up for cake after finding an invitation blowing down the street. Robert and his dad take it in stride and simply decide they'll need even more cake!
The basic premise of this book is cute and I generally like the message you can get out of it. However, the illustrations and the actual cake in question here left me with, well, questions. Is it cake? Is it salt dough made to look like cake? If its the former how do they make it so fast and why can they "mound it up?" If its the latter, aren't we bound to have a whole apartment full of disappointed friends who came to eat cake? So many questions. This is clearly a book for younger readers who won't have these questions, but since the people reading the book aloud will, I'll only rank this one as optional. And now I want to eat cake.
Reviewer: TC
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