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Summary
Summary
Mother-daughter team Joyce and Polly Dunbar offer a sweet and whimsical confection for babies, inspired by a nursery rhyme.
It's late at night, and everyone is sleeping--except for pat-a-cake baby! All dressed up in his chef's coat and hat, baby wants to make a very special cake. Time to wake up Candy baby, Jelly baby, and Allsorts baby--miniature cherubic figures who float through the pages to lend a hand. One by one, they add ingredients, from glitzy sugar to yolky jokey eggs, until it's time to bake, pat, and decorate the cake. Finally it's ready for tasting, just in time for a special guest (the man in the moon!) to have a slice. This surreal and colorful treat is just right for sending little ones off to dreamland.
Author Notes
Joyce Dunbar has published more than eighty books, including Shoe Baby, which was illustrated by her daughter, Polly Dunbar. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. She has also written stories for radio and TV and contributed to anthologies. She lives in Norfolk, England.
Polly Dunbar is the author-illustrator of Penguin, Dog Blue, and Arthur's Dream Boat . She is also the illustrator of My Dad's a Birdman, written by David Almond, and Here's a Little Poem, an anthology of poems for very young children. She lives in London.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-All tongue-twisting rhythm and sugary rhyme, this story stars a baking baby who sneaks into the kitchen to create a sweet surprise while everyone is sleeping. Accompanied by three miniature and multicolored sous chefs, the baby mixes, pours, and sifts before it is finally Pat-a-Cake Time. With the moon as the guest of honor, the quartet of sticky babies enjoy the fruits of their labors when it is finally Eating Time. Pastel colors, sparkles, and dreamlike star-spangled backgrounds help suspend reality in this adaptation of the familiar rhyme. The rhyme scheme, word choices, and length may make reading aloud challenging without some practice beforehand. VERDICT By inviting audience participation in each rollicking step and possibly pairing the book with an actual baking activity, this sweet story can be a treat.-Jenna Boles, Greene County Public Library, Beavercreek, OH © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ten years after Shoe Baby, the mother-daughter Dunbars return with another baby-centric spin on a nursery rhyme. Never mind the late hour: there's a rosy-cheeked baby chef in the kitchen-"a cookie baby/ a pat-a-cake baby"-and she's ready to cook up a cake for the Man in the Moon. She gets eager assistance from the pixie-size Candy Baby, Jelly Baby, and Allsorts Baby, who share her gleeful disregard for doing things in a neat or orderly fashion. Pat-a-Cake Baby whips together all the ingredients (yes, there's a break for licking the bowl and "each other"), frosts, and decorates with abandon, producing a cake that's "very gooey/ chewy yimmy yummy... so creamy/ so magic moonlight dreamy." Daughter Polly Dunbar's pictures are a confectionary dream: ingredients fly around the pages in balletic swoops, the typography dances, and the babies' energy is boundless-it's a candy-coated version of Sendak's In the Night Kitchen. Joyce Dunbar's text has only a passing connection to the Mother Goose rhyme, and her baking-themed wordplay ("It's hulla-balloony-moon-time!") is the literary equivalent of a sugar high. Ages 2-5. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
With great enthusiasm, Pat-a-Cake Baby enlists help in creating a late-night "spiffy special cake." Ingredients are added, then the cake is baked, patted (of course), and decorated before, finally, "IT'S EATING TIME!" The rollicking rhythms and silly words on each page would make a bouncy read-aloud; the similarly active illustrations feature amusing details, like the increasingly hungry moon in the background. (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Baby bakes. This Caucasian baby, in a white onesie and a chef's hat, is a self-proclaimed "cookie baby [and] pat-a-cake baby." After nightfall, the baby proceeds to the kitchen, where three tiny candy friends are waiting. The rollicking, rhythmic text, which reads aloud in a most bouncy and satisfying way, dances and giggles all over the pages. Butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour are shaken and strewn and sifted by baby and companions. The cake is baked and iced and served so deliciously that the Man in the Moon comes to share. Pastel candy colors abound, with stars and sprinkles. Wordplay is everywhere; the baby happily declares that they're "frisking while we're whisking 'til it's flitter flotter fluffy." After the cake's in the oven, who can resist? "We're scraping out the bowl / with an icky flicky licky / and oops we lick each other / and all of us are sticky." This is accompanied by an image of baby and buddies all in the mixing bowl, licking their fingers. Perspective bends and stretches like a fun-house mirror (or taffy), and the relative sizes of kitchen tools and objects are a little dizzying. It's good fun but definitely not quiet bedtime reading, especially since it concludes with multicolored capital letters spelling out "IT'S EATING TIME!" A sweet confection through and through, from the glitter on the cover to the nonpareils on the endpapers. (Picture book. 4-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
