Cake: Love, Chickens, and a Taste of Peculiar by Joyce Magnin

Cake: Love, Chickens and a Taste of Peculiar, by Joyce Magnin.  Zonderkidz, 2013, 221 pages.  Age/interest level: 8-14.

Reading Level: Middle grades, ages 8-10

Recommended for: ages 8-12

Bottom line: Wilma Sue, a foster child, learns the  value of love through baking in this whimsical story with a Christian theme.

When it’s time for Wilma Sue to move to a new foster home, she’s not too sorry to say good-bye to the Crums.  But at least she was used to them.  A new foster family is always scary, and this time it’s downright weird: Ruth and Naomi Beedlemeyer, a pair of spinster sisters who served as missionaries in Africa, go around barefoot, and bake very odd cakes.  Sure, they seem nice, but do they want a daughter or a drudge?  Wilma Sue has reason to suspect the latter, especially when she’s assigned to look after the chickens—meaning clean up their poop and everything.  On the other hand, she’s always had a special feeling for birds: what if she had hollow bones like they did, and could fly away from unhappy situations?  The avian theme makes several appearances as Wilma Sue comes slowly down to earth and starts to feel at home with Ruth and Naomi.  But there’s a girl who seems to want to be friends but doesn’t know how—and those cakes Naomi’s always baking seem to have the strangest effect on people . . .

Cake resembles Bliss in some ways, including magical pastry and a baking experiment gone very wrong, as well as good-natured, exaggerated characters engaged in situations stretched to their humorous limits. But there’s more of a point and more of a resolution, especially as Wilma Sue learns patience and forgiveness and pineapple upside-down cake (recipe included).  The lovable eccentricity of Ruth and Naomi is a nice metaphor for Christians, who don’t (or shouldn’t) really fit in this world, but find ways to reach out to it.

Cautions: Worldview (“magical” elements)

Overall rating: 4

• Worldview/moral value: 4.5
• Artistic value: 3.5

Categories: Middle Grades, Christian, Magical Realism