cover image Eight Animals Bake a Cake

Eight Animals Bake a Cake

Susan Middleton Elya. Putnam Publishing Group, $15.99 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-399-23468-2

Having made a bilingual foray to the market in Eight Animals on the Town, Raton (Mouse), Gato (Cat) and friends now tackle the culinary arts and add 33 Spanish vocabulary words in Eight Animals Bake a Cake by Susan Middleton Elya, illus. by Lee Chapman. Each animal brings one ingredient to the cake-baking session (recipe appears at the end): ""Dog brings the egg, one huevo to beat. `Hurry up,' Perro says. `I want to eat.' "" Chapman's paintings glow with south-of-the-border colors and a Mexican folk-art spirit; whimsically patterned frames contain translation equations (""Dog = Perro,"" ""Egg = Huevo"" and so on). (July)