Zuzu's Wishing Cake Book

What Zuzu wants, Zuzu makes. In her happy hands a brown paper bag becomes a flower or a hat. Cardboard becomes a tent, a telescope, or a car. Zuzu makes everything into something else. But making a friend of the boy next door turns out to be harder than she thought. Can she get him to smile?

With the pictures by award-winning illustrator D. B. Johnson, Linda Michelin tells this exuberant story of a red-haired girl and her irrepressible imagination.

Children's Literature

Zuzu is determined to befriend the new boy who has just moved in across the street. In quirky, mixed media illustrations that vary from full page to up to six comic book-like boxes per page, Zuzu is shown creating crafty little gifts for the new boy: a telescope out of a paper towel roll ("First you take all the paper towels off the roll,") sunglasses out of a strip of photograph negatives, and finally, a "wishing cake" of layers of crust-trimmed bread smeared with strawberry jam and topped with a dandelion gone to seed and ready to be blown into the wind. It is this last offering that finally brings non-English speaking Hashim out of his house to play. Young children will identify with the amusing illustrations and probably be inspired to create some interesting crafts of their own. The bit of multiculturalism is a nice added touch in this sweet story.