Do you have any suggestions of children’s books that have cake – or other kinds of food- as a theme?! I am working with a boy who has extremely challenging behaviour. He has an obsession with all things associated with cake and this is proving a good motivator (he doesn’t necessarily want to eat it!!). He’s recently has discovered books as something he really enjoys.
Food is a big subject in children’s books from Oliver Twist onwards. A great many children love food – especially the kind of food they are not always allowed – and having the chance to enjoy it in a story and especially if it is illustrated is therefore very popular.
There are two exceptional pieces of writing about cake – and both have been illustrated by Quentin Blake!
One is Michael Rosen’s poem Chocolate cake from his collection Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here and you can also see Michael acting the poem out on YouTube: “Oh the icing on top/ and the icing in the middle/ ohhhhhh oooo mmmmmm. /But now/ I can’t stop myself/ Knife -/1 just take any old slice at it/and I’ve got this great big chunk/and I’m cramming it in/what a greedy pig/but it’s so nice,”.
Rosen’s night-time raid on the left over chocolate cake brilliantly tells of the overwhelming delight of that delicious. In Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Miss Trunchbull, the villainous head-teacher at Matilda’s school, sets Bruce Bogtrotter the punishment of eating a whole chocolate cake.
In both books eating the cake has nasty as well as nice overtones but I hope they will not detract from their cake-centred delight.
For an excellent story all about cakes try Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre’s exhilarating new novel for younger readers, Cakes in Space. When Astra asks for “the most amazing, super-fantastic cake ever” which she then defines as “something so delicious, it’s scary” the Nom-O-Tron computer sends an incredible army of cakes: fairy cakes with gleaming eyes and sharp, pointy teeth; cupcakes with crossed-eyes and fierce expressions; marauding muffins.
Sarah McIntyre’s illustrations of Astra’s deadly battle against these delicious but potentially dangerous enemies is thrilling and hilarious. And very cake-filled.
There are cakes galore in Posy Simmonds’s picture book Baker Cat in which the shop’s cat teams up with the shop mice to outwit the nasty and mean owners. The cat and mice bake all kinds of cakes, buns and biscuits as well as partying on the ingredients left in the store room.
If biscuits can be counted, Mini Grey’s Biscuit Bear, the story of the night-time adventures of a batch of newly baked biscuits who come alive and cause total night-time chaos.
In Elfrida Vipont and Raymond Briggs’s The Elephant and the Bad Baby , the two characters go on an eating spree including the baby taking a cake from the bakers – as well as many other delicious foods such as an ice cream – while the tea picnic at the end of John Burningham’s classic Mr Gumpy’s Outing also shows how satisfying a good tea can be and how much cake can be enjoyed.
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