PANCAKES, PANCAKES!
illustrated by Eric Carle
Like Pelle's new suit but without its incidental pleasantries, Jack's breakfast pancake is a joint enterprise: wheat from the field, flour from the miller, an egg from the hen, milk from the cow, plus, via Jack, butter from the churn, wood from the woodshed and strawberry jam from the cellar. Then, with more instructions, the mixing, the frying, the turning. . . until, finally, "Oh, Mama, I know what to do now!" The illustrations, a frieze of many-colored, multi-'textured forms, lack the concentration of the text, and the splotchy red flesh is uninviting. A likely idea, an unprepossessing presentation.