Product Description

Marcia enjoys being her mother's helper, so she's hurt when Mother hires Fannie Farmer to prepare family's meals. But sure enough Fannie's charm (and griddle cakes!) win Marcia over, and she finds herself cooking up delights she never thought possible!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #709079 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 40 pages

From Amazon.com
Young Marcia Shaw is not thrilled to hear that a mother's helper named Fannie Farmer is joining her Victorian household to cook for the growing family. Somehow, though, it's hard to complain when suddenly the blueberry pies are "sweeter than a summer sky" and the biscuits are "small, light, and flaky. Just delicious." In spite of herself, Marcia quickly becomes an avid fan and ardent student of Fannie, even encouraging her to begin writing precise instructions to her cookery magic, thus spawning one of the first published cookbooks, Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, a.k.a. The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Considered the pioneer of the modern recipe, Fannie Farmer transformed countless kitchens into oases of exact measurements and perfect cooking. Deborah Hopkinson's fictionalized account, complete with original griddle cakes recipe, is a warm, humorous take on the real Fannie Farmer. Nancy Carpenter created splendidly original illustrations for the book, manipulating 19th-century etchings and engravings and blending them with her own watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations. Wonderful! (Ages 4 to 8) --Emilie Coulter

From Publishers Weekly
Prepared to perfection and served up with style, this historical nugget imagines an interlude in the life of cookbook pioneer Fannie Farmer, who, prior to her stint at the Boston Cooking School, worked as a mother's helper. As Hopkinson (Maria's Comet) envisions it, the daughter of the house--who has a touch of the Eloise gene--is not at all pleased with Fannie's arrival. "I'm your helper," the spunky Marcia protests to her mother, but she soon becomes an acolyte: "Fannie seemed like a magician who could make mashed potatoes fluffier than clouds and blueberry pies sweeter than a summer sky." Marcia's many culinary flops, on the other hand, from discovering that she has cracked a rotten egg into her batter to flipping a griddle cake onto the cat, ultimately inspire the unflappable Fannie to write down precise instructions in a precursor to her immortal cookbook. Cleverly served up in seven brief "courses," the proceedings are garnished with Carpenter's irreverent illustrations, which seamlessly incorporate period engravings within pen-and-wash drawings. Her scenes wittily spoof Victorian decorum, whether showing the perfectly coiffed and coutured lady of the house greedily licking her plate or the initially sullen Marcia, slumped in a chair with her back to the reader, her scowl reflected in a pair of water glasses, a gravy boat and a decanter. The biographical afterword and an appended pancake recipe are simply icing on the (griddle) cake. Ages 4-9.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Gr 1-3-Fannie Farmer is often cited as the creator of the modern recipe. She worked as a mother's helper for the Shaw family in Boston and this fictionalized account, told through the eyes of the young Marcia Shaw, follows her tenure with them. The illustrations are a combination of 19th-century engravings and etchings and the illustrator's own drawings that were combined and manipulated with a computer and then water colored. This technique gives a sense of the time period while allowing wit and humor to be interwoven in the story (young Marcia balances a cake on her head before putting it in the oven, and the proper Mrs. Shaw can be seen licking her plate clean). The playful nature of both the illustrations and the text is appealing, and serves to draw readers into the story. The short biographical sketch, "More about Fannie Farmer," helps to round out the account, and a recipe for griddle cakes, which play a significant role in the tale, is included. In a time of celebrity chefs on television, this is a whimsical look back to when it all began.-Genevieve Ceraldi, New York Public Library

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Wonderful for classroom use
I am an educator who likes to use historical fiction with elementary students. Students love the story of FANNIE IN THE KITCHEN, and we have also used the book to talk about how cooking has changed over the years. I bring in old kitchen utensils from antique stores to show them. (Many kids can't identify a sifter, to say nothing of a butter mold! And when was the last time you saw a doughnut cutter??) We also use the book as a jumping off point to talk about math and measurements.

Although this is clearly a humourous, fictionalized take-off on a footnote to history, students and I also enjoy talking about how young Marcia must adjust to change, as her mother has a new baby. The way the illustrator depicts the developing relationship between Marcia and Fannie is delightful.

As the author note states, Fannie Farmer was one of the first to recommend precise measurements in cooking. What a fun way for kids to be introduced to this 19th century figure

Fun Fiction
Kids might have seen the Fannie Farmer Cookbook in the kitchen but never known that Fannie Farmer was a real person. This is an obviously fictionalized story, but it does include some actual quotes from Farmer's early cookbook. Nancy Carpenter's illustrations combine Victorian clip art with her own drawings. Not a biography, but a fun introduction to the name of Fannie Farmer and a story about how a young girl gains confidence in the kitchen.

Cute book, but historically inaccurate
Hopkinson has written a clever picture book incorporating tasty recipes, but take the details of Fannie Farmer's life with a grain of salt. Hopkinson has altered the facts to serve her story.

Farmer's first cookbook was an update of a cookbook, written by one of her predecessors at the Boston Cooking School, which already incorporated precise measurement using standard measuring cups and spoons. Farmer's contribution was "level" measurement (as suggested by Marcia) and kitchen-testing of all the recipes by the school's students and faculty.

Read "Fannie in the Kitchen" to your child as an introduction to Fannie Farmer. Then read "Perfection Salad" by Laura Shapiro to learn the true story.