Flour Power: Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off by Herman Parish

"SHHHHHHH!" said Mr. Rogers, as Amelia Bedelia came in.

"Don't mind him," said Mrs. Rogers. "He's watching his favorite television program."

Chef DuJour was saying, "I'll pick the winner of my Big Bake-Off prize, $1000!"

"Wow!" said Mr. Rogers. "That's a lot of dough!"

"Not really," said Amelia Bedelia. "A thousand bucks is a lot of deer, but there's no doe there."

Amelia Bedelia is the queen of the misunderstood homonym, and even on her day off, she's off and running. Mr. Rogers suggests that Amelia should enter her famous lemon meringue pie in Chef DuJour's Bake-Off, but Amelia points out that she's too busy subbing as chief baker at Grace's Cookie Shop for the day, assisted as usual by her partner in malapropism, Cousin Alcolu.

And soon, over at Grace's shop, Amelia Bedelia and Alcolu set out bravely to follow Grace's plan for the day. First on the list is to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and immediately there's a problem when Alcolu reads Gracie's added instruction:

"Cut the recipe in half."

Amelia Bedelia takes care of that expeditiously. One snip of the cooking shears and the recipe is cut in half. But chipping up all those tiny pieces of chocolate takes a lot more time.

Finally they two are ready for the second item on Gracie's list.

"Bake twelve pound cakes"

"That's a mighty heavy cake!" says Amelia Bedelia.

But math is Alcolu's strong suit, and he suggests they make twelve pound cakes and stack them up. But when they follow Grace's recipe, they come out with enough batter for 13 loaf pans full.

"Baker's dozen!" says Amelia Bedelia cheerily, but when they stack all thirteen cakes up, number thirteen falls off and breaks into pieces

And the last item on Grace's note is a bit confusing.

"Make one crumb cake."

A crumb cake? Oh! So that's what the thirteenth cake was for! Amelia Bedelia packs the crumbs into another pan, adds a topping, and declares the crumb cake done, such as it is.

But there's still one more culinary challenge ahead for Amelia Bedelia, in Herman Parish's funny, punny Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off (I Can Read Level 2) (Greenwillow Books, 2016).

In this brand-new I-Can-Read paperback edition, Peggy Parish's linguistically challenged housemaid carries on with her tussle and tangle with the English language, earning heaping cupsful of snickers from young independent readers.

In this continuing series by the beloved Peggy Parish's nephew Herman, the half-baked housemaid is highlighted by the comic artwork of Lynn Sweat, who also illustrated some of the original Amelia Bedelia books (including one in which Mrs. Rogers requested a sponge cake and Amelia Bedelia made one with chopped up kitchen sponges.) But, this time Amelia's baking is not only edible, but a real winner, in a jolly ending to this merry culinary mixup. Some of Amelia Bedelia's doings may be a bit hard to swallow, but, as School Library Journal" says, "..."fans of the series are sure to eat this up."