posted on 31 Mar 2020

Clever Cakes by Michael Rosen

That cunning old fox of the children’s literature scene, Michael Rosen, has done it again and come up with a couple of delicious little tales for younger children based on tried and tested formulas of traditional fairy tale material. This book from the Barrington Stoke, Little Gem series, does in fact contain two stories – Clever Cakes and The Great Golden Belly-Button.

In Clever Cakes, a young girl, Masha, who lives with her Grandmother, finds herself whisked off during a walk in the woods by ‘a massive muscly bear’ who positively insists that Masha is to become his housekeeper, cook and bottle-washer. Now, Masha is not the kind of girl to take kindly to this abduction and after a short while she comes up with a cunning plan to escape and get back to her Grandmother.

You wouldn’t expect me to reveal what the trick is but suffice it to say that it involves the baking of some very delicious cakes, one very greedy bear and a bit of sneaky deception based on the ability to impersonate some angry baked goods.

It’s all great fun and what a treat to have such a resourceful young girl as the central character.

The second story, The Great Golden Belly-Button, features a very, very bored king who just can’t find anything to amuse him any more – not even lashings of egg on toast! His closest advisor, Bradstock, comes up with the idea that maybe the King would be diverted by a competition, the winner of which would win a Great Golden Belly-Button ornament that has never had any use.

So they come up with the idea of awarding the trophy to the person capable of telling the most whopping lie – or at least the one that would most astound the King. But, after a while and after tons of inventive and outrageous lies, the miserable monarch was about to give up on the project when up turned young Peggy.

What happens when she joins in is something you’ll have to find out for yourself, of course.

The book is illustrated in colour throughout by Ashley King who adds an extra, splendid dimension to the stories with his, often full page, drawings.

Coming along in the Little Gem series should always be a signal that you’re going to get some little extras along with the main menu. The inside cover gives the young reader a maze to fathom out and on the inside back cover there are four riddles to crack.

Great stuff all round.

 

Terry Potter

March 2020