A Cake For Herbie

A Cake for Herbie

Amazon.com ReviewIn Lottie's New Beach Towel and Lottie's New Friend, Petra Mathers evokes the spirit of James Marshall's hippos George and Martha, celebrating the quiet joys of the friendship between Lottie the chicken and Herbie the duck with a feather-light touch.In A Cake for Herbie, Herbie (the star of the third Herbie and Lottie book) decides to enter a poetry contest in which the winner literally takes the cake. Despite the fact that he stays up all night concocting poems about food from A to Z ("Artie chews, / Artie swallows, / Artichokes"), he is booed off the stage on the big night. This is especially "K ... for kruel" because Lottie is quite greenly sick and not there to comfort him. But all is not lost. Herbie, forlorn in the back alley, is soon ushered into a bustling restaurant kitchen where he and his delicious doggerel are welcomed by sweaty Betty (offering spaghetti) and a host of other shamelessly rhyming birds of a feather.Herbie's new friends bake him a cake after all, and he can't wait to tell... Lottie! He zooms home along the now seemingly endless road, arriving with a mostly eaten cake and a story to share while she knits on the couch. Mathers's neatly boxed, crisply composed, colorful paintings each communicate a small story-within-a-story, richly deserving the close study of voracious young bookworms. If you haven't yet discovered this artist's sweet, funny world, now's the time to be introduced. (Ages 4 to 8) --Karin SnelsonWith the encouragement of his friend, Herbie spends days writing poems about food for a contest and although he does not win, he does find an appreciative audience. By the creator of Lottie's New Friend.From Publishers WeeklyHerbie and Lottie, Mathers's winsome duck-and-chicken duo (Lottie's New Beach Towel; Lottie's New Friend), are in town for groceries when they spy an announcement for a poetry contest. "A Cake for a Poem," the poster reads. Being inordinately fond of both, Herbie sets to work, and with a bowl of chocolate pudding as his muse, he composes an alphabetically organized poem entirely about food ("A: Artie chews,/ Artie swallows,/ Artichokes"). The audience boos his masterpiece, though, and with Lottie sick in bed, he has nowhere to turn for consolationDuntil he meets up with the versifying cooks and waiters at the Ship's Inn restaurant. After an evening of conversing in rhymed couplets, they send him home with his self-esteem restored and a magnificent cake to boot. Mathers's droll, economical text and vibrant, equally economical visuals in tidy panels combine seamlessly to portray Herbie's anticipation, anxiety, humiliation and grateful sense of belonging. She captures the humor and sweetness of his efforts in idiosyncratic, perfectly childlike detail: thinking "makes his head hot"; he blushes when Lottie gently corrects his spelling ("I like it, but caramel custard starts with C"). A funny, reassuring addition to a highly appealing series, this makes a delectable dessert indeed. Ages 4-8. (May)Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.From School Library JournalPreSchool-Grade 2-Inspired by a contest poster that offers a cake for the best poem and encouraged by his friend Lottie the hen, Herbie the duck decides to enter. He proudly composes verses about foods, from A to Z, but, alas, his recitation is ridiculed by the audience on the night of the competition. Mortified, he slips away from the auditorium and hides in an alley outside the Ship's Inn restaurant. Luckily, he is discovered by the establishment's jovial cooks and waiters, all of whom love rhymes about food and appreciate his talent. He is fed lavishly and then presented with a freshly baked cake to take home and share with Lottie. The writing is lively and clever, with amusing word pairings and a gentle, satisfying plot. Bright, cartoon watercolor illustrations in a comic-strip style format are full of life and fun.Patricia Pearl Dole, formerly at First Presbyte