From Publishers Weekly
Too many cooks spoil the veggie soup in this breezy picture book about food and friends. Miss Bun the rabbit is a prize- winning cook, having mastered all the recipes in her Great Nana's cookbook. But after so much time relying on Great Nana's careful methods, Miss Bun decides she'd like to wing it, whipping up "something tasty, something original, something all my own." She invites her pals over for a repast of veggie soup ? la Miss Bun. However, each guest feels compelled to supply the hostess with their own favorite soup ingredient, from wiggly worms to tangy tunas. Could her friends' suggestions kick the soup up a notch? Miss Bun, thinking her soup "blaaaa," adds the questionable items to the pot. The foul-tasting result convinces the bunny chef that Great Nana does indeed know best. Donohue's (Big and Little on the Farm) structure is built on repetition and cumulative-tale elements that will be familiar to many young readers, but her language could use a little spicing up. Her cut-paper collages are a smorgasbord of rumpled texture and bright color; shapes are layered and partially raised throughout, creating something of a 3-D effect. The soup recipe appears on the final page. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2-In a spirited match of illustration and text, Donohue offers a fresh story about friendship, advice, and sharing. The artist's crisp, animated paper-collage creations feature familiar animals in an unfamiliar setting: a kitchen where a rabbit cooks up recipes from her favorite Great Nana's cookbook. Things begin to go awry when friends invited to her veggie-soup party stop by to improve the recipe with favorite ingredients: worms, hay, fish, bugs. The result is a classic case of "Too many cooks spoil the broth." The art dominates each double-page spread, with the oversized blue text printed in side panels. As the situation becomes more chaotic, the angles of the illustrations become wackier until the situation is resolved. Plot development drags a bit in the middle, and the ending (setting up a soup kitchen to share the bounty) may have to be explained to children, but, overall, this is a delightful book. Because the text is repetitive and predictable in part, and all of the art is large, it would be a good storytime selection. In addition, families and classrooms could extend the experience by making their own soup following Great Nana's recipe included at the end.
Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.