Fannie in the Kitchen

Prepared to perfection and served up with style, this historical nugget imagines an interlude in the life of cookbook pioneer Fannie Farmer, who, prior to her stint at the Boston Cooking School, worked as a mother's helper. As Hopkinson (Maria's Comet) envisions it, the daughter of the houseDwho has a touch of the Eloise geneDis not at all pleased with Fannie's arrival. "I'm your helper," the spunky Marcia protests to her mother, but she soon becomes an acolyte: "Fannie seemed like a magician who could make mashed potatoes fluffier than clouds and blueberry pies sweeter than a summer sky." Marcia's many culinary flops, on the other hand, from discovering that she has cracked a rotten egg into her batter to flipping a griddle cake onto the cat, ultimately inspire the unflappable Fannie to write down precise instructions in a precursor to her immortal cookbook. Cleverly served up in seven brief "courses," the proceedings are garnished with Carpenter's irreverent illustrations, which seamlessly incorporate period engravings within pen-and-wash drawings. Her scenes wittily spoof Victorian decorum, whether showing the perfectly coiffed and coutured lady of the house greedily licking her plate or the initially sullen Marcia, slumped in a chair with her back to the reader, her scowl reflected in a pair of water glasses, a gravy boat and a decanter. The biographical afterword and an appended pancake recipe are simply icing on the (griddle) cake. Ages 4-9. (May)

Copyright 2001 Publishers Weekly Used with permission.

Gr 1-3 Fannie Farmer is often cited as the creator of the modern recipe. She worked as a mother's helper for the Shaw family in Boston and this fictionalized account, told through the eyes of the young Marcia Shaw, follows her tenure with them. The illustrations are a combination of 19th-century engravings and etchings and the illustrator's own drawings that were combined and manipulated with a computer and then water colored. This technique gives a sense of the time period while allowing wit and humor to be interwoven in the story (young Marcia balances a cake on her head before putting it in the oven, and the proper Mrs. Shaw can be seen licking her plate clean). The playful nature of both the illustrations and the text is appealing, and serves to draw readers into the story. The short biographical sketch, "More about Fannie Farmer," helps to round out the account, and a recipe for griddle cakes, which play a significant role in the tale, is included. In a time of celebrity chefs on television, this is a whimsical look back to when it all began.-Genevieve Ceraldi, New York Public Library

Copyright 2001 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.