Sugar Cookies

Title: Sugar Cookies, Sweet Little Lessons on Love

Author: Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Illustrators: Jane Dyer and Brooke Dyer

Publisher: HarperCollins, October 2009

Readability Lexile: Ages 4-8

Children's Picture Book

Summary and Target Audience:

This story is about making cookies and using the cookie process to talk about character attributes.  It defines words that are associated with love.  From letting your best friend have the last cookie (selfless) to waiting to lick the bowl together (considerate) here is a book for anyone who wants to say I love you.
The audience for a book like this is tricky.  While it does have some great definitions that teach some great lessons about being a "good" person the words chosen are debatable and some parents would not be comfortable having these lessons taught at school.  It is more for personal conversations between students and their parents.
*Has some advanced vocabulary that may be useful for slightly older children such as unrequited.

High Quality Literature:
This is a good story- it was a new way of defining words of character and I really enjoyed the relatable cookie making process that helped kids put into terms words they may be hearing at home or around school.  "Constructive means that if the cookie tastes funny, I'm going to be honest and tell you.  I think you mixed up the salt and sugar."
Illustrations- the illustrations are unfortunately not very diverse.  It is mostly Caucasian children with their moms and dads and some smiling and generic animals.  There were a few different characters but they were few and far between. The animals were all very well dressed as well as the characters.  Some of the characters acted out the vocabulary words as well.
Setting- the setting was generic as well.  Some was outside, some at a table in the kitchen, some at a cookie stand.  None of the settings were very relatable or life-like. I wasn't very impressed with where they were all pictured.

Literary Elements:
Analogy- the whole book was an analogy.  While making cookies there is constant reference to the meaning of the word and how to compare that to sugar cookies and activities that involve sugar cookies. "Heartbroken, my heart feels sad and hurt, like a crumbling cookie."
Metaphor- Throughout the analogy of the book there are metaphors in the definition of each word that help the reader even more in identifying meaning. "Adore means I think you're simply delicious. Oh, I could just gobble you up."
Personification- used in this book again in that the animals all wear clothes and are showing human emotion.  The goat, for example, is holding her heart and has a very loving look on her face while trying to show "adore" on the previous page.

Illustrations:
As mentioned before, the illustrations are not anything special.  The animals are extremely generic and the watercolors, while beautiful, aren't anything that help the reader picture the scene.  The characters are mainly Caucasian with the A-typical family as well as the animals.  There are only two diverse characters, one pictured with a mom who's face is not full profile while another does not have a parent figure with her.

Mini-lesson:
This book would be great for definitions of terms.  However, the types of terms may be advanced for some students or unfamiliar because some terms of love for different cultures are much different than the main stream.  It would help to open up discussion on all terms of endearment.  You could create a word wall of different types of words that build character in all different cultures.