Customer Reviews

Mr. Wolf's Pancakes

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you and the kids are tired of sugar-sweet stories in which all the characters live happily ever after, then Jan Fearley's Mr Wolf could be just the anti-hero for you. Most of this delightful book is devoted to describing Mr Wolf's diligent efforts to assemble the ingredients for and then prepare a delicious stack of pancakes. As he is a rather inept chef with poor reading and writing skills, he seeks the advice and assistance of a host of well-known storybook characters (e.g., The Three Little Pigs, The Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.). Unlike most tales where the large fanged one is portrayed as 'big and bad', however, it is the (apparently) naive and innocent Wolf who encounters rejection, verbal barbs and outright hostility from the nursery world's equivalent of 'the bold and the beautiful'. But after suffering their many slings and arrows, he manages to produce some of the tastiest hotcakes in town. The slightest waft of their aroma is enough to bring all of Mr Wolf's so-called 'friends' knocking on his front door. He rather sheepishly lets them into his kitchen, where they set about devouring his lovingly concocted meal. Only after they have finished off every single pancake does the devilishly clever Mr Wolf turn the tables on this ungrateful and self-serving lot. And in the wink of an eye and flip of a page, he gobbles each and every one of the good-for-nothings down, thus having his cakes and eating them too!

Three cheers for Mr Wolf - and Jan Fearnley!

John, Kate and Elena Thompson

I just picked up this book in a store and had to buy it for my friends' kids. It is a great story with a few lessons to be learned and a good dose of humor. If you like the type of quirky humor in the "Dumb Bunnies" books (by Sue Denim), you'll love Mr. Wolf's Pancakes. Your kids will laugh out loud as they pick up the lessons on manners and determination- and I dare say you will enjoy the reading as well.

I love this book! For once the Wolf is not shown to be the bad guy! I found this to be a very positive book showing that it is not a good idea to be nasty and greedy, even to towards characters that would normally be thought of as the bad guys. (When the Wolf won in the end my entire family cheered! You go Wolf!)

I don't agree with the person who said that this book has a bad moral or that it is odd. It is just suposed to be funny and it is! Don't take it so sereously.

I picked this book as a conclusion to a preschool unit on pancakes. What a delightful book. The students loved the fairy tale characters involved in the story and had fun making predictions about the end of the story. Excellent book for increasing language skills in youngsters. Parents enjoyed the book as well.

At an AR reading level of 3.4 this is a good picture book for a 3rd grader to read to themselves. I personally agree with some of the other reviews and I wouldn't choose to read this to the younger crowd(preschoolers).

If you are looking at this book to read to your daycare kids or in a group setting at a school, I would advice against it for under age 5, Some parents may not appreciate the morbid humor in the end.

3rd grade readers will find it humorous and enjoy reading about the wolf who makes the pancakes and then eats his guests. A play off of the Little Red Hen story.

This book is not for those who prefer a book that enriches a child. The wolf wants to make some pancakes and asks for help from his good fairytale neighbors, but they all slam the door in his face. The wolf then realizes he has to do it himself. Through hard work and determination he ends up making a batch of delicious pancakes himself (fantastic character development). The neighbors smell the pancakes and demand to have some. Thus, the wolf invites them in and ends up eating his neighbors and the pancakes. I don't find this very humorous or funny at all.

As I started reading this book to my daughters, I was captivated by the cute illustrations and by the way I thought this story was going. I was thinking that the moral of the story was going to be that you can still be nice to others, even though they are not nice to you. And that if people aren't willing to help you, you just try hard yourself and you can do ANYTHING. However, I was shocked that in the end the wolf knew there was "only one decent thing to do" and that is to eat everyone.

Not a good story; not a funny story; not a great life lesson.

terrorists use the same logic- nasty people deserve violence- enough said!






1

My father bought this book for my three-year-old daughter on the recommendation of a bookstore staffer. The illustrations are nice, and I understand the point about not being rude, but, um... everyone is eaten by the wolf in the end. There's no softening of the fact that he ate all the rude people up and still had room for pancakes. And the moral is...? Don't be rude, or the predators among us will have a right to kill you? This is one odd book.