Horse and Zebra Bake a Cake

June 15, 2023
A pair of bakers work together on a special oatcake recipe. Although the title mentions only one cake, anthropomorphic, bipedal Horse and Zebra make many oatcakes in this story. At first it seems the text may take a page from "The Little Red Hen," since Horse does all the work baking oatcakes to sell while Zebra sleeps until noon. But when the oatcakes start to sell like hotcakes, Zebra steps up to pitch in. The friends' baking success is short-lived, however, since the animal community soon tires of plain oatcakes. Horse resists Zebra's plan to jazz up the recipe: " 'Whoa!' said Horse. 'The old Clydesdale Family Oatcake Recipe has never changed before. We can't change it now!' " When Zebra tries to make some changes anyway, the complex recipe she attempts is a flop, with animal customers rejecting it outright. Finally Horse comes around to the idea of adding just one special ingredient to the recipe, and the pair has a baked-goods success on their hands once more thanks to the compromise they reach. Although the storyline is a bit light and the cartoon illustrations are largely redundant, doing little to expand upon the text, a discussion guide and recipe help to round out this pleasant enough offering. A simple story with compromise baked in. (Early reader. 4-7)

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July 1, 2023

K-Gr 2-Horse runs a farm stand where she sells her baked oatcakes. When she sells out at the farm stand, her friend Zebra suggests that they sell them in town next time. Zebra will even do the work pulling the cakes in their wagon. Once again they're very popular, but after a few weeks the customers are disappointed that there is no variety. Zebra is ready to try something new, but Horse says it's a family recipe that they can't change. Zebra creatively launches into the recipe, adding bananas and chocolate chips. But then she goes a bit too far and adds too many new ingredients, including eggplant and spinach. The friends finally compromise and add rainbow sprinkles, because one special ingredient is perfect. The cake wagon is back in business! Along with helpful illustrations on every other page, the words are one or two syllables in length, and the basic, predictable sentence structure will assist the earliest of readers. VERDICT A good general purchase to expand any beginning reader collection.-Linda Annable

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