Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Pancakes! An Interactive Recipe Book
Novelty nonfiction Board Book
For ages 4 to 6
Phaidon Press, 2016 ISBN: 978-0714872834
We are going to make pancakes! Before we begin cooking, annotated drawings show us which ingredients we are going to need, and the kitchen utensils that we are going to use. Next we are shown, step by step, how to make the batter. The first step is to mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, and we can see how to do this done by looking at the illustrations. We then have to whisk together all the wet ingredients in another bowl. When they are well whisked, we add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix.
Probably the most exciting part comes next; the cooking part. We are shown how to ladle the batter into a frying pan, how to flip the pancakes when “the tops start to bubble,” and when to take the cooked pancakes out of the pan to put them on a plate.
What makes this little book unique is that six of the seven spreads include novelty features such as tabs to pull and dials to turn. Children can actually see what is going to happen when they make their own pancakes. They can enjoy a bookish interactive cooking experience before they try the real thing.
