Cookies & Milk by Shawn Amos

Cookies & Milk is an enjoyable fictionalized account of the world’s first chocolate-chip cookie store and the launch of a “famous” business.

Cookies & Milk by Shawn Amos. Little, Brown, 2022, 296 pages

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 8-10

Recommended for: ages 8-12

A cookie store???

With his parents going through a divorce, Ellis Bailey Johnson isn’t looking forward to a great summer. His mom is off on a journey of self-discovery while his dad is following the same old discovery track of launching a new business. This time, Dad just knows he has a sure thing: chocolate chip cookies! The ones he makes really are the best anybody ever ate, but a store selling nothing but chocolate cookies? On Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard, in the middle of the 1970s recession? Owned by a black father and son? It has to be Dad’s craziest idea yet, and what’s worse, Dad insists he and Ellis are going to do this together.

Fortunately, Ellis has a really good friend who’s willing to help. Alex is white, but the boys jam to the same music, with Muddy Waters singing the Delta blues a perennial favorite. Summer takes a promising when the boys meet a real-live DJ named Wishbone who’s equally into funk and welcomes them to the radio station anytime they want to hang out and spin some tunes. But Dad doesn’t like that idea, and in fact doesn’t seem to want the boys anywhere near Wishbone. What’s up with that?

Finding the sweet

First-time author Shawn Amos knows his cookies. As the son of Wally “Famous” Amos, he helped his father open the world’s first chocolate chip cookie store on Sunset Boulevard in the 1970s. His parents were also divorced, and his friends were mostly white, and he got into many of the same scrapes as the fictional Ellis (though he doesn’t mention meeting Muddy Waters). He also faced some of the same racist blowback but nevertheless felt welcomed and affirmed by white friends. His story, and Ellis’s, is upbeat and often funny, demonstrating that goodness, and good friends, and delicious cookies, are out there to be found. (And of course he includes the recipe.)

Consideration:

• There’s a small amount of language: one “damn,” one “hell,” and one misuse of God’s name.
•  We never got around to reviewing it, but How the Cookie Crumbled (see Amazon link below) is a fun picture book about the invention of the world’s most beloved cookie.

Overall Rating: 3.75

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 4

Read more about our ratings here.                 

Also at Redeemed Reader:

Review: The Season of Styx Malone is another great summertime read.

Resource: Liven up a long summer afternoon with a Cookie Story Tea!

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