Review Detail
Kids Fiction
371
Baking up a storm
Overall rating
4.0
Plot/Characters/Writing Style
4.0
Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)
N/A
Zoe lives in Boston with her mother and stepfather. Her best friend, Trevor, lives next door, but as summer starts, Zoe is still smarting from comments she heard Trevor make to his sporty friends about her, so she doesn't want to hang out with him. Luckily, her mother has a friend who runs a bakery, and Zoe has the opportunity to spend time there honing her skills so she can try out for a kids' version of a baking reality show. Unfortunately, she spends more of her time folding boxes than scooping batter, since the other workers don't trust a kid. When a letter arrives for her and turns out to be from the father she has never met because he is in prison, Zoe is curious and writes back. Her father seems very nice, and she slowly gets some more information about the murder he is accused of committing. Sure that her father is telling the truth that he didn't do it, she starts to investigate some leads, going with Trevor to find a women who remembers meeting him when she posted an ad on Craigslist. Her grandmother has been helping Zoe get the letters, but eventually the two have to come clean to her mom. Armed with her evidence, the family goes to Project Innocence to try to get her father released.
Good Points
Readers will be very happy to find a book about an African American girl who is solidly middle class, much like Isabella in Draper's Blended or Amara in Watson's Some Places More Than Others. I've been looking for books like this for years, and have been glad to see titles that don't take place in the inner city. Baking books, like Simon's The Cupcake Diaries and LaRocca's Midsummer's Mayhem, are fairly popular. Readers will enjoy trying out some of Zoe's recipes for Froot Loop cupcakes, and the details about having a parent in prison are thought provoking.
While Zoe's efforts to track down what happened to her father seem to go more easily than one would expect in real life, it is good to see her identify a problem and work to solve it. It's also good to see her working with her grandmother, even though her mother probably should have know what she was doing!
This has a fantastic cover, so I would purchase it just for that. It's a solid story, and I'll be looking forward to seeing what else Ms. Marks writes.
While Zoe's efforts to track down what happened to her father seem to go more easily than one would expect in real life, it is good to see her identify a problem and work to solve it. It's also good to see her working with her grandmother, even though her mother probably should have know what she was doing!
This has a fantastic cover, so I would purchase it just for that. It's a solid story, and I'll be looking forward to seeing what else Ms. Marks writes.
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