PreSchool-Grade 2 One Sukkot, Bubbe Isabella builds a sukkah and decorates it with leaves and branches, colored cloth, apples, grapes, corn, and pumpkins. Each night she wishes for someone to sit with her and share her freshly baked lemon cake. However, the only guests she receives are a caterpillar, a moth, a squirrel, a raccoon, a deer, and a bear that accidentally smashes the cake.
Grade 1-3-Ingenuous Miss Spider can't understand why insects flee in panic at her approach. Being a florivore herself, she only wants to invite them over for cakes and tea. The ironic air wafting through Kirk's rhymed tale will not be lost on young readers, and the insects in the big, brightly colored illustrations bear comically apprehensive expressions as they hastily depart. Miss Spider is depicted as a freckled, green-eyed beauty with a bulbous black-and-gold body; she and her would-be guests are seen in a slightly softened focus that sometimes sharpens to a glossy solidity reminiscent of William Joyce's figures.
A team of criminals led by mastermind Peter Branson kidnaps the President of the United States and his two guests from the Middle East, a prince and a king, on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, in a masterfully conceived and clockwork-timed operation. Branson and his men block off both ends of the bridge, wire it with explosives, and demand half a billion dollars and (adding insult to injury) a full pardon for themselves. Any rescue attempts will result in the detonation of the explosives, which will kill the President (and his guests) and destroy the Golden Gate Bridge.
C. Funke – Ghosthunters and the Gruesome Invincible Lightning Ghost!
Boy hero Tom, Hugo the Averagely Spooky Ghost, and famed ghoul hunter Hetty Hyssop have formed an agency dedicated to dealing with difficult apparitions. No spook can defeat them, until their too close encounter with a Gruesome Invincible Lightning Ghost (or “GILIG” in ghosthunter-speak).
This superheated specter has taken over the penthouse suite of a beach-front hotel, where it’s passing its eternal vacation by turning guests into ghosts themselves!
Maybe Hugo’s slime can douse the flaming phantom, or maybe the ghosterhunters’ plan is doomed to go up in smoke…Get scared silly!
The newcomer to cake decorating will be encouraged to great things by this colourful title, while more experienced decorators will be excited by the choice of recipes and techniques. Whether it's a simple chocolate buttercream house for a child's sticky birthday party, or a royal-iced wedding cake for fifty guests, the clear instructions and beautiful photography will reassure and inspire.
