The Great Pancake Escape
 Paul Many - Illust. by Scott Goto
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 Walker & Company
  ISBN: 0802787967

When Dad's pancakes magically take flight, it's up to his children to round up their breakfast.

It should have been another dull yawning in the dawning, slapping ingredients together for a hurried breakkie. Instead, Dad reads from the wrong recipe book, & all of a sudden Ka-BLAM! -- batter is sizzling & pancakes are wriggling -- off the kids' plates, through the house, out the door!

Stampeding pancakes, pancakes everywhere -- along the streets & all over town. Bus drivers munching, commuters marching under pancake umbrellas & trees shedding pancakes like leaves!

& the kids have to dash after them if they want to eat!

I read The Great Pancake Escape to my beloved (who is the cooker of pancakes in our house & often flips them into the oddest places) & he laughed out loud.

There are books that simply lift your spirits, make you laugh & leave you with a good taste in your mouth, & Paul's & Scott's The Great Pancake Escape is one of them. Another title would have been The Great Pancake Caper!

Written in rhyming verse, (a no mean feat by the way!) this rollicking read has all the ingredients for a tasty feast of words. Some I'm sure Professor Paul made up!

Very well done! Highly recommended for all families who want to read & chuckle together.

Paul Many teaches many different writing courses at The University of Toledo in Ohio. He has written & been published in many genres.
For Adults & Academics of All Ages
Finding the Words to make sense of it all The Blade, Essay on 9/11 attack.
Literary Journalism: Newspapers' Last, Best Hope, The Connecticut Review, Spring 1996. Essay.
Rabbits, Live and Dressed, Various publications. Short story.
The Fine Art of Saying No, Academe, September 1996. Essay.
For Teens/Young Adults
My Life, Take Two.
These Are the Rules.

Scott Goto has illustrated Will Rogers: Larger than Life; Shooting Star Annie Oakley, The Legend; Heat Wave; & Shoeshine Whittaker all for Walker & Company. He is a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, & now lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Do catch my lively Interview with Paul Many, the rhyming writer!

(06/23/02)

Rebecca