Mr. Wolf's Pancakes

Rating:
Summary: great book!
Review: I just picked up this book in a store and had to buy it for my friends' kids. It is a great story with a few lessons to be learned and a good dose of humor. If you like the type of quirky humor in the "Dumb Bunnies" books (by Sue Denim), you'll love Mr. Wolf's Pancakes. Your kids will laugh out loud as they pick up the lessons on manners and determination- and I dare say you will enjoy the reading as well.

Rating:
Summary: I like this book alot
Review: I love this book! For once the Wolf is not shown to be the bad guy! I found this to be a very positive book showing that it is not a good idea to be nasty and greedy, even to towards characters that would normally be thought of as the bad guys. (When the Wolf won in the end my entire family cheered! You go Wolf!)

Rating:
Summary: Nasty People Get Theirs in the End!
Review: I love this book! For once the Wolf is not shown to be the bad guy! I found this to be a very positive book showing that it is not a good idea to be nasty and greedy, even to towards characters that would normally be thought of as the bad guys. (When the Wolf won in the end my entire family cheered! You go Wolf!)

Rating:
Summary: A Deliciously Delightful and Devilishly Clever Tale
Review: If you and the kids are tired of sugar-sweet stories in which all the characters live happily ever after, then Jan Fearley's Mr Wolf could be just the anti-hero for you. Most of this delightful book is devoted to describing Mr Wolf's diligent efforts to assemble the ingredients for and then prepare a delicious stack of pancakes. As he is a rather inept chef with poor reading and writing skills, he seeks the advice and assistance of a host of well-known storybook characters (e.g., The Three Little Pigs, The Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.). Unlike most tales where the large fanged one is portrayed as 'big and bad', however, it is the (apparently) naive and innocent Wolf who encounters rejection, verbal barbs and outright hostility from the nursery world's equivalent of 'the bold and the beautiful'. But after suffering their many slings and arrows, he manages to produce some of the tastiest hotcakes in town. The slightest waft of their aroma is enough to bring all of Mr Wolf's so-called 'friends' knocking on his front door. He rather sheepishly lets them into his kitchen, where they set about devouring his lovingly concocted meal. Only after they have finished off every single pancake does the devilishly clever Mr Wolf turn the tables on this ungrateful and self-serving lot. And in the wink of an eye and flip of a page, he gobbles each and every one of the good-for-nothings down, thus having his cakes and eating them too!

Three cheers for Mr Wolf - and Jan Fearnley!

John, Kate and Elena Thompson

Rating:
Summary: A Deliciously Delightful and Devilishly Clever Tale
Review: If you and the kids are tired of sugar-sweet stories in which all the characters live happily ever after, then Jan Fearley's Mr Wolf could be just the anti-hero for you. Most of this delightful book is devoted to describing Mr Wolf's diligent efforts to assemble the ingredients for and then prepare a delicious stack of pancakes. As he is a rather inept chef with poor reading and writing skills, he seeks the advice and assistance of a host of well-known storybook characters (e.g., The Three Little Pigs, The Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.). Unlike most tales where the large fanged one is portrayed as 'big and bad', however, it is the (apparently) naive and innocent Wolf who encounters rejection, verbal barbs and outright hostility from the nursery world's equivalent of 'the bold and the beautiful'. But after suffering their many slings and arrows, he manages to produce some of the tastiest hotcakes in town. The slightest waft of their aroma is enough to bring all of Mr Wolf's so-called 'friends' knocking on his front door. He rather sheepishly lets them into his kitchen, where they set about devouring his lovingly concocted meal. Only after they have finished off every single pancake does the devilishly clever Mr Wolf turn the tables on this ungrateful and self-serving lot. And in the wink of an eye and flip of a page, he gobbles each and every one of the good-for-nothings down, thus having his cakes and eating them too!

Three cheers for Mr Wolf - and Jan Fearnley!

John, Kate and Elena Thompson

Rating:
Summary: Rude People Deserve to Die?
Review: My father bought this book for my three-year-old daughter on the recommendation of a bookstore staffer. The illustrations are nice, and I understand the point about not being rude, but, um... everyone is eaten by the wolf in the end. There's no softening of the fact that he ate all the rude people up and still had room for pancakes. And the moral is...? Don't be rude, or the predators among us will have a right to kill you? This is one odd book.