LOUISE LOVES BAKE SALES

Art-loving Louise and her little brother, Art, cook up creative treats for the first-grade bake sale in this early-reader offering.

Throughout the book, which features a first-person text with controlled vocabulary, an unmentioned black cat accompanies bespectacled Louise and her robot-costumed brother, adding visual interest to the pictures. The opening spreads depict Louise with Art as she expresses her love for art of all kinds. “I see art in everything!” she exclaims while reading a baking cookbook. The next page depicts a notice on the refrigerator for contributions to a bake sale to fund a field trip. The children, who are both depicted as white with light skin, set out to bake and decorate “a rainbow of cupcakes.” They start with primary colors for the frosting and then mix them together for more options, but the process goes awry when Art combines too many colors and they end up with big bowls of gray frosting. “At least they taste good, even if they don’t look like art,” Louise generously states. Her eureka moment arrives when she repeats the phrase “Look like Art,” and a first-person visual perspective shows her comparing the gray-frosted cupcakes with the gray-helmeted Art. Inspired, Louise adds confectionary embellishments to the cupcakes, which make them look like little robots, too, and the “ROBO CAKES” are a hit at the bake sale.

A sweet sibling outing, in both senses of the word.