Louise Loves Bake Sales

October 15, 2017
Art-loving Louise and her little brother, Art, cook up creative treats for the first-grade bake sale in this early-reader offering. Throughout the book, which features a first-person text with controlled vocabulary, an unmentioned black cat accompanies bespectacled Louise and her robot-costumed brother, adding visual interest to the pictures. The opening spreads depict Louise with Art as she expresses her love for art of all kinds. "I see art in everything!" she exclaims while reading a baking cookbook. The next page depicts a notice on the refrigerator for contributions to a bake sale to fund a field trip. The children, who are both depicted as white with light skin, set out to bake and decorate "a rainbow of cupcakes." They start with primary colors for the frosting and then mix them together for more options, but the process goes awry when Art combines too many colors and they end up with big bowls of gray frosting. "At least they taste good, even if they don't look like art," Louise generously states. Her eureka moment arrives when she repeats the phrase "Look like Art," and a first-person visual perspective shows her comparing the gray-frosted cupcakes with the gray-helmeted Art. Inspired, Louise adds confectionary embellishments to the cupcakes, which make them look like little robots, too, and the "ROBO CAKES" are a hit at the bake sale. A sweet sibling outing, in both senses of the word. (Early reader. 5-7)

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December 1, 2017

PreS-Gr 2-Louise loves all kinds of art, from classic portraits to abstract paintings. She can see art in everything around her. But can she incorporate art into her baking? The first grade bake sale is coming up and Louise wants to create artistic cupcakes. Not wanting to accomplish this task alone, she employs her brother Art, as her assistant. Louise starts with the primary colors: red, blue, and yellow. Then she realizes they can be mixed together to create purple, green, and orange. Now she has all of the colors she needs to make a rainbow. Unfortunately, her assistant gets a bit carried away and the final color becomes a drab gray. Louise is persistent artist and baker. She uses her imagination-and some inspiration from her brother's robot costume-to use the dull color frosting and create whimsical cupcakes. This is a good book for beginning readers. The sentences are short and the words are easy to decipher. There is plenty of repetition to help young ones retain newly acquired words. It also incorporates a bit of science and art. The three primary color words are reviewed as well as the secondary ones. The illustrations are entertaining and provide strong support for the text. Even though Louise's little brother does not say a word, he's a major character in the story. The book teaches a lesson about working together and not giving up. VERDICT A must-have for easy reader, maker, and picture book collections.-Barbara Spiri, Southborough Library, MA

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2019
Art-loving Louise must rethink her bake sale plans when little brother Art mixes all the icing colors together (Bake Sales); when Louise's cat scares the class guinea pig, Pigcasso, her brother saves the day (Class Pet). Emerging readers will appreciate the large font, ample white space, and appealing illustrations, but the subtle difference between art (noun) and Art (character) may confuse those unfamiliar with Louise's earlier picture books.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)