The Kitchen Talks - Hardcover

Shirley Mozelle is the author of the Zack's Alligator beginning reader series, among other books. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

Petra Mathers has written and illustrated many books for children. She lives near Astoria, Oregon.

Kindergarten-Grade 5-Mathers's cover illustration tells the overarching story: in a charmed kitchen a smiling doorknob is confronted by 12 microphones determined to get the inside story. Mozelle's verse, mostly bite-sized morsels, offers a playful take on commonplace objects such as paper towels, dishes, the stove, and the kitchen clock. Many of the poems are formulaic riddles that give away their subject in the title line. A few succeed in offering an unusual description of the object, as in Toaster: Jack-in-the-box/For bread/Includes a tan. The terse two-liner for Freezer works in much the same riddlelike way: Cold as ice/But no goose bumps. The 20 short verses offer children amusement and new ways of thinking about things. Whimsical watercolors often appear helter-skelter in their placement from page to page with much white space. Yet there are charming moments such as the painting of the inside of a freezer where a frozen blue trout stands on its tail while juggling a few frozen peas.-Teresa Pfeifer, Alfred Zanetti Montessori Magnet School, Springfield, MA
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