Whopper Cake

When Grandma's birthday arrives, Grandpa decides he'll "traumatize" the kitchen with his baking skills and create an even bigger cake than he's made in previous years. Despite admonitions from his wife, Grandpa proceeds. How can four eggs turn into 86 or one cup cocoa become 24 boxes or a pan expand into his truck's flatbed? Grandpa's adapting the recipe! Ed Sala narrates with a steady pace, emphasizing both the rhyme and the exaggeration of this original tall tale. He gives personality to Grandpa and Grandma and relishes the "whopperness" of everything. The recording includes a recipe for a cake, not a whopper, but large enough for 16. A.R. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

July 23, 2007
Wilson (Bear Snores On
) and Hillenbrand (Smash! Mash! Crash! There Goes the Trash!
) cook up a sweet and jaunty picture book. Their protagonist, Granddad, falls in the bigger-is-better camp, at least when it comes to his wife’s birthday celebration. Despite her protestations (“Don’t make a fuss, you hear?”), Granddad has an itching to whip up one heck of a confection in her honor. With two canine sous chefs, Granddad gets to super-sizing a chocolate cake recipe that ends up baking in the pick-up truck bed rather than in the tiny conventional oven. Kids will delight in Wilson’s bouncy rhyming stanzas flavored with down-home vernacular and the slapdash slinging and flinging of eggs (86), flour (10 bags) and cocoa (24 cups) by Granddad and pups in playfully energetic mixed-media spreads. No one can argue with Granddad’s defense to his astonished birthday gal: “Your heart’s so big, you deserve a whopper cake!” A chocolate cake recipe (of realistic proportions), with directions in the couple’s dialect, is included. Ages 4-8.