PERFECT PANCAKES IF YOU PLEASE

A bejeweled caricature of a king, perfectly rotund and greedy, offers his daughter's hand in marriage to the suitor who can produce a stack of perfect pancakes. This parody of the way in which princess brides gain their spouses is full of familiar patterns and plotting, complete with a handsome young beau, Roderick, and an evil inventor, Maximilian. While poking fun at the fairy-tale genre, Wise (Ten Sly Piranhas, 1993, etc.) tells a laugh-aloud story about a king's breaking his promise to Maximilian, whose little black box spits out perfect pancakes. He promptly curses the kingdom, and not since Homer Price's doughnut machine has a wacky invention gone so splendidly haywire—a plethora of pancakes is the result. Egielski masterfully stretches the humor of the story, peopling the pages with pop-eyed Roy Gerrardlike characters engaged in convincingly ridiculous comedy just this side of wild. The Evil Inventor is a perfect Rumpelstiltskin figure, down to his skeleton cufflinks. Neither author nor illustrator neglects the happily-ever-after ending, in which Maximilian is shipped off to the moon, the king temporarily realizes his folly, and the princess gets her man. (Picture book. 4-8)