Louise Loves Bake Sales by Kelly Light

Today's guest blogger is Katya Schapiro, Senior Children's Librarian at the Bay Ridge Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. She served on the 2016 Geisel Award committee.

Louise Loves Bake Sales, by Kelly Light, is one of several Louise books from Light, the first of which is the sibling heart-warmer Louise Loves Art. In this I Can Read Book®, Louise and her little brother Art expand the definition of art to include baked goods. Louise plans an ambitious rainbow of cupcakes for a bake sale, but detours into a more conceptual direction after an icing mishap. This is a fun story about siblings and cupcakes, but for some reason I've been resisting reviewing it for the Geisel. Despite a closely controlled word count and sentence structure (it's designated Level 1: Beginning Reading by the publisher), something about the story flow and text/illustration relationship seems daunting, and possibly a little confusing for a new reader.

The heart of the issue is that the story hinges on the fairly complex concept of multiple modes of art, and the illustrations don't offer enough support for the themes. For instance, a sequence where different colors are mixed into icing is confusing in its order and on the page. Some concepts, like 'food can be art' are just difficult to convey in this format.

This concern doesn't negate the charm of the book, which would be a great read or read-aloud and has a funny and generously creative theme. It does, however, make it less likely to be considered for a Geisel Award. Everyone loves cupcakes, though, so who knows?