PASTRY SCHOOL IN PARIS

The Zills twins are off to Paris with their family, and their success with brownies leads their father to suggest they try cooking school. Matt and Bibi are put in charge of the liquids and quickly discover the importance of careful measurements. Opportunities to measure and compare liquid amounts (cups, pints and quarts) abound as the twins drink French drinks, cook and experiment with equivalent liquid measurements. Their newfound know-how comes in handy when they have to impress an important school visitor in Chef Celine’s absence. While this in no way replaces the hands-on experimentation necessary for learning about capacity and equivalent liquid measures, it does serve as a good reinforcement of those concepts, and the backmatter provides activities that will get children measuring. Langdo’s watercolors round out the twins’ personalities and accurately reflect the text but are less effective in illustrating the actual measurements and equivalencies. Although a nod or two are given to metric measurements, this French cooking school inexplicably uses English units as well, misrepresenting the near-universality of metrics as an international system. (Picture book. 7-10)