Who Made This Cake?

by Chihiro Nakagawa, Junji Koyose (Illustrator)

Overview

Little people use BIG machines to make a GIANT birthday cake! Imagine an industrialized Lilliput. Imagine today. Imagine an enormous construction site. Imagine a birthday cake like no other. What if the people you order your next birthday cake from are tiny, and what if they build cakes the way we build buildings? Tractor-trailers and giant cranes, catwalks, and helicopters. Hundreds of workers. Never have you seen such a construction site in this Horn Book Fanfare Award winner!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590785959
Publisher:	Highlights
Publication date:	09/01/2008
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 11.70(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	5 - 7 Years

About the Author

Chihiro Nakagawa is the author and illustrator of many picture books, including Nohara-Hime (Princess of the Field) and Tenshi-no-Kaikata (How to Take Care of an Angel), which won the Readers' Choice Prize of Nihon Ehon Shou (Japan Picture Book Award). She also translates Japanese picture books into English. She lives in Saitama, Japan.

Junji Koyose graduated from Setsu Mode Seminar, a private art school. He designs books and illustrates for various magazines, including special enthusiast magazines about motorbikes and cars. Who Made This Cake? is his first picture book. He lives in Kanagawa, Japan.

Editorial Reviews

"Will fascinate young children, especially those enthralled by Legos and the like." —Booklist

"Double spreads of deliciously detailed cranes, loaders and shovels at work will engross young children. . . . A charming collaboration." —Kirkus Reviews"Big machines and food fun: There's a toddler combo!" —Chicago Tribune

* —Horn Book

From the Publisher

PreS-Gr 2

This story begins before the title page, as a worker takes an order over the phone. As the tale progresses, a miniature construction crew uses various vehicles to assemble cooking ingredients, mix a batter, pour it into a pan, load it into an oven, and then ice the final product: a birthday cake. Nakagawa's text employs an economy of words and simple sentences to supplement Koyose's detailed artwork, which is the heart of the book. Done in black ink lines and bright colors, the illustrations bustle with tiny workers wearing hard hats and matching boots. The ending shows a mother presenting the human-size cake to her child. This delightful picture book will be popular with fans of construction stories and makes a good choice for one-on-one sharing.-Lynn K. Vanca, Akron-Summit County Public Library, Richfield, OH

School Library Journal

How would a crew of inch-high bakers make a birthday cake for an imaginative, standard-issue preschool boy? With diminutive heavy equipment, of course. Translating her own simple text from the Japanese, Nakagawa takes readers step-by-step from the excavation of hills of flour and sugar to the airlift (via helicopter) of a fancy cookie into its place amid giant strawberries and whipped cream. Debut illustrator Koyose bedecks the tiny workers in primary-hued helmets and boots. Double spreads of deliciously detailed cranes, loaders and shovels at work will engross young children, who'll spot the successful crew spying on the family celebration from outside the dining-room windows. Other visual clues implicate the birthday-boy's imagination in the process. Sweet, leafy endpapers depict the mini-kids at play, and the elongated trim size suits the panoramic scenes. A charming collaboration. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews