Reviewed by Claire Stuckey
Trudie loves cooking; in fact, she started at a very early age. However,
Trudie and her parents have kept her super talent for cooking and developing recipes
a secret. At age ten her skills are amazing, but she is not so fabulous at
maths or art or other sporting endeavours. After a P&C meeting at their
house, Trudie is upset to learn the next morning that the school library must
shut. This means losing not only all the fabulous books, cookbooks as well, and
Miss Best the librarian. While watching her favourite TV show Super Chef,
Trudie decides she will ask the host Aggie Weir for help. Trudie and her
parents are overwhelmed by the response, but this opportunity will mean
Trudie’s secret will be out.
This nice colourful reader has good production quality and looks
appealing to those children caught up in the popularity of cooking shows. The
story is well written and concentrates wholly on the central character. Both
the letter to Aggie Weir and the recipes provides different text types and
expanded vocabulary which assists children reading this style of chapter
book. My only issue was that the story
seemed to end abruptly. Given an opportunity to publish her cookbook – how,
when and would the library be repaired? Trudie’s secret was out but only
to Aggie and the publisher at this point. Perhaps the author intended this to segue to
the next book in the series?
Recommended for age 7 years plus.
