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Month: March 2018
Katie Shaeffer Pancake Maker
By Cynthia Mackey
Book Blurb
Katie is too young to use the stove so she dreams of making her very own pancakes. Join Katie and her friend Baxter in this fun story as they use a passion for collecting and building to find a way to realize Katie’s pancake dream! This upbeat energetic tale with great potential for reading aloud will appeal to adults and young children alike. The book includes a predictable rhyme that will have children chiming in as the story unfolds. Children will celebrate with Katie and Baxter as their pancake dream becomes reality! Recipe included. (Taken from Goodreads)
My Review
Katie Shaffer loved building things, but more than that she loved eating pancakes. In fact, she dreamed of making “Golden brown, fluffy as a cloud, perfectly round, PANCAKES!” herself, but her parents said she was too young to use the stove. So, Katie went to her collection box where she had saved all sorts of castaways – cardboard, ribbon, buttons, kitchen gadgets, and more. She and her new neighbor Baxter decided to build their own pancake maker so they could make, “Golden brown, fluffy as a cloud, perfectly round, PANCAKES!” Together they blended the ingredients and then Katie mixed in a magic ingredient. The pancakes were delicious, so they decided to go to the store to get various butters, syrups, and jams to top their “Golden brown, fluffy as a cloud, perfectly round, PANCAKES!” When they returned they found pancakes on the floor, the ceiling, the bed, everywhere! They had forgotten to turn off the pancake maker and now had enough pancakes to feed their families, friends, and neighbors. That is exactly what they did!
This wonderful story shows children that some dreams do come true and you can accomplish a lot through cooperation. If you want the young children in your life to hear or read stories of hope, the rewards of working toward a goal, and friendship and cooperation, then this book is for you. The book even includes the recipe for Katie’s “Golden brown, fluffy as a cloud, perfectly round, PANCAKES!” I thoroughly enjoyed reading KATIE SHAEFFER PANCAKE MAKER! Without a doubt, I give this book 5 gold stars!
About the Author
Cynthia Mackey has always loved children’s literature. After years of teaching preschool and kindergarten, she is proud to have written her first children’s book, KATIE SHAEFFER, PANCAKE MAKER. She lives on the west coast of British Columbia wither her family and her piano where she faithfully continues her Saturday morning pancake tradition. (Author Bio taken from the back cover of the book)
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Where’d You Go, Bernadette
By Maria Semple
Book Blurb
A compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle – and people in general – has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence – creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world. (Blurb is from Goodreads)
My Review
Bernadette Fox had many idiosyncrasies and was too unbelievable to keep my interest. When she disappeared, leaving her teenaged daughter and husband without knowledge of her whereabouts, I totally disliked her, never mind that she had tried and failed. She should have done better.
I know this book has had a lot of rave reviews, but it just fell short for me. I couldn’t abide Bee’s mother and father raising a child in the mess of the house they called home. Plants coming up through the floors, mold in abundance, structural issues are unacceptable for a family who had the know-how and the money to do something about it. Bernadette should have pulled herself together and used her education and resources to correct the major issues. Elgie, her husband, should have put his foot down instead of escaping by working late and pretty much being an absent parent. I had many more issues with this book.
On the positive side, I loved Bee. She did her best in her circumstances, generally more adult than either of her parents. Then there was Audrey. At first, I disliked her, but she showed her true colors in the end and they were beautiful. She saw her own faults for what they were and owned up to them.
If the author intended this book for a younger audience, perhaps 40’s and younger, she probably hit her mark. My book club read Where’d You Go, Bernadette and all of the ladies agreed it is not meant for the older age group.
This honest review reflects my own thoughts and feelings about the book.
About the Author
Maria Semple is the author of the novels Today Will Be Different (2016), Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2012) and This One is Mine (2008), all published by Little, Brown and Co. Before writing fiction, she wrote for the TV shows 90210, Mad About You, Arrested Development and others.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette, an international bestseller, has been translated into 30 languages. It spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and made over a dozen year-end best lists. It was short-listed for the Women’s Prize and received the Alex Award from the American Library Association. It’s currently being made into a film starring Cate Blanchett, Kristen Wiig and Billy Crudup. Richard Linklater writes and directs. The movie is slated to open in 2018. Today Will Be Different was an instant international bestseller and was featured on the cover of the New York Times book review. It, too, made over a dozen year-end best lists. It’s currently in development with Annapurna pictures as a limited TV series with Maria writing and executive producing.
Maria loves to teach. She’s taught her popular writing workshop at Hugo House and the Cloud Room in Seattle, the Aspen Writers Conference, and Wordstock in Portland.
Maria spent her early years traveling around Europe with her bohemian parents, but that ended abruptly when her father, Lorenzo Semple, Jr., finished a pilot for Batman while living in Torremolinos, Spain. He airmailed it in, they shot it, and the family moved to LA. After the Batman TV series and feature, Lorenzo went on to write a bunch of movies. Once he was established, the family moved to Aspen, Colorado. Maria attended boarding school at Choate Rosemary and college at Barnard, where she majored in English. She moved to LA shortly after graduating Barnard and wrote screenplays which never got made, and TV shows which did. In 2008 Maria, George Meyer and their little daughter moved to Seattle just because. It was a difficult adjustment for Maria, which became the basis for Where’d You Go, Bernadette. The novel came out in 2012 and became an instant bestseller. (Author Bio from Author’s Website)
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