jiastar's Full Review: Joan Holub - The Pizza That We Made
This book, The Pizza That We Made, is a "level 2" book by Puffin Books. It is geared toward readers who are ages 5 to 8, in grades K thru 2, and who are just starting to read on their own.
The book is 30 pages long: 24 pages of text, 1 page with an actual pizza recipe, and the remainder being illustrations alone. The words are simple and familiar and should present little trouble to a child able to read independently. Most sentences are roughly 6-8 words long and many pages have two sentences. This is not necessarily an easy book but it presents a nice challenge for a child who has outgrown beginning readers.
The story is simple enough, three young cooks Suzanne, Max, and Jake decide that there's a pizza to make. The story is told in rhyme and therefore has an almost sing-song beat to it if read aloud. The children mix and kneed the dough and wait for it to rise. They toss it, smother it in sauce, and add "green things" and cheese. Finally they bake it and eat it. Hooray!
The illustrations are bright, cheerful, and vividly colored. Additionally, the book makes an effort to reflect diversity as while two of the children (and the lone adult) depicted are Caucasian, the third child is darker skinned. I was personally pleased to see this.
The story itself is rather engaging as it accurately depicts the process of making your own pizza. The children start by making dough and, with an adults help, top it and bake it and then gobble it down. The illustrations follow the text nicely and together show kids having fun, making a bit of a mess, but being pleased and proud at the story's end with what they were able to create.
My favorite parts, as a parent, happen to be the effort taken to show more dangerous tasks such as using a knife or oven being handled by the adult and showing the children cleaning up the kitchen while the pizza bakes.
All in all I have to say that this is one of the more entertaining early reader books that are on our bookshelves. Not only does the story hold a child's interest, but it exposes them to the process of cooking: reading a recipe, following the steps, taking safety precautions and cleaning up after yourself. The text is just challenging enough for younger grammar school students and would make a great book to read on pizza night, whether yours is made from scratch, comes from a box in the freezer, or gets brought to your front door.
Suzanne, Max and Jake are making a pizza in this adorably illustrated Easy-To-Read book with a recipe so readers can make their own pie. Full-color il...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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