Fiction - Food, Baking & Desserts, Fiction - Family Life

All in Just One Cookie

Name: All in Just One Cookie
Author: Susan Goodman
ISBN: 9780060090920

by Susan Goodman, Timothy Bush

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Overview

ALL IN JUST ONE COOKIE

A tasty picture book about what goes into Grandma's chocolate chip cookies.

Synopsis

1 hungry Vermont cow
2 stalks Hawaiian grass
1 tsp flower seeds from Madagascar
2 days of hard work from a New Hampshire hen
1 tsp Pacific Ocean
1 tsp dried-up Wyoming lake
2 ¼ c Kansas field
2 c West African beans

Mix. Bake until golden brown.

It may not be the usual recipe, but it's just what Grandma needs to bake her famous chocolate chip cookies!

You won't believe what is all in just one cookie! Yum!

Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz - Children's Literature

"They're on their way. I've got to get cookin'," says Grandma as she hangs up the phone. And one by one she selects the ingredients for her chocolate chip cookies. As the mixing and baking progress, we are given background information for each ingredient—where it comes from and how it is made. Meanwhile, Grandma's cat and dog are offering their comments in vignettes. From the butter we move to sugar, with directions for the recipe in large type and a multitude of facts around them in smaller print. Then come vanilla, eggs, salt, baking soda, flour, and chocolate, each with its double-page spread. The cookies are formed, put on the cookie sheet, and baked. As they cool, a world map shows where the ingredients have come from. Finally, we are reminded, is clean-up time. Bush has carefully designed double-page spreads that manage to provide the baking instructions and the factual information, while leaving space for the watercolor visuals of the charming cat and dog and some barnyard friends having a ball. Their antics are crucial to the visual storytelling while we observe Grandma attending to the cookie creation. Although tempted by the provided recipe (for which adult help should surely be indicated), readers will be handsomely rewarded by just multiple readings of this delightful tale. 2006, Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins, and Ages 5 to 8.

About the Author, Susan Goodman

Susan E. Goodman is the author of many acclaimed nonfiction books for children, including On This Spot: An Expedition Back Through Time, which was a Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2004. Her book The Truth About Poop was named Best of the Best by the Chicago Public Library, and Skyscraper was a Booklist Editors' Choice for 2004 and a Book Links Lasting Connection.

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Editorials

Children's Literature

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4-When Grandma gets a phone call announcing that visitors are on their way, this hip senior immediately bustles around her homey kitchen to gather up the ingredients for chocolate-chip cookies. While she begins to bake, her pets set out on an informational quest to research the "world of ingredients" that she adds to her mixing bowl. In a comprehensive culinary tour around the globe, the curious cat and food-obsessed dog discover a variety of interesting, scientific facts about the manufacturing of the different components of the recipe, which is included on the last page of the book. For example, "it takes 21 pounds of milk to make a pound of butter" and cocoa beans "are cream-colored, not brown, and taste bitter, not sweet at all." Each spread is devoted to a single element of the recipe identified at the top of the page in large, colored print. A step-by-step description of the baking process, from Grandma's washing her hands to the cookies' cooling on the counter, is juxtaposed with the findings of the animals' research and their humorous but corny commentary. Although this clever title offers many interesting facts, the slightly cluttered presentation may overwhelm curious young bakers who would be inclined to browse through its pages. Also, the abundance of love that Grandma pours into her baking efforts is diminished because readers do not see her sharing her delicious baked goods with her eagerly anticipated guests.-Linda L. Walkins, Mount Saint Joseph Academy, Brighton, MA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Chocolate-chip cookies may come from Grandma's oven, but their ingredients come from all over the world, as a pair of exuberant animal researchers finds out. While twinkly Grandma bustles about the kitchen, Bush's sunny illustrations take her excitable dog and cerebral cat much further afield: First to Vermont and Hawaii to see how butter and sugar are created; then to Madagascar for vanilla extract; on to salt pans near San Francisco, a Kansas wheat field and less defined locations for eggs and chocolate. Laced with captions, paragraphs of information and exclamations, the visual gustatory odyssey ends with a map (properly showing that some ingredients can be from several places), a caution against feeding chocolate to pets, a proffered plate of finished cookies-and the requisite recipe to finish it all off. Shelve next to Marjorie Priceman's How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (1994), and turn even more young gourmands into globetrotters. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)