Pancakes, Pancakes!

Pancakes, Pancakes! Written and illustrated by Eric Carle

Picture book for ages four and up

Three Stars

When Jack is awakened by the crow of a rooster, he decides that he wants pancakes for breakfast, but when he asks his mother for pancakes, she sends Jack on a mission to retrieve all the ingredients from the farm.

Pancakes, Pancakes! is an okay story book. The illustrations are unique with the collage style, but they depict nothing more than what the text states. I personally did not receive any pleasure from reading this story, but I did learn how to make homemade pancakes. With that being said, this book should be read from an efferent stance as it describes the natural process of obtaining the ingredients on the farm and then cooking the pancakes from scratch. For example, Jack had to cut the wheat, take it to the miller, beat the wheat to separate the grain from the chaff, grind the grain into flour, take an egg from the henhouse, milk the cow in order to be able to churn the butter, and then cut wood into firewood. Next, the book describes the cooking utensils and the steps needed to make the pancakes. In conclusion, people would read this book for information more than they would read it for pleasure because the language is nothing special or fun, it is straightforward. According the Louise Rosenblatt, the experience the reader has while reading a story depends on the past experiences the reader has had. If audiences did not know how to make pancakes and all the steps that go into just collecting the ingredients, they might find this story enjoyable and interesting, as well as informational. Other people, including me, who have made pancakes from scratch before and who already know the process of making flour from wheat and butter from the cream of milk, would find Pancakes, Pancakes! quite dry.

“In the fifth edition of Literature as Exploration, Rosenblatt (1995) describes what teachers can do to promote ‘real literary experience[s]’ for school related reading” (Swafford and Akrofi, pg. 27). Although I found Pancakes, Pancakes! to only be a mediocre book, does not mean that I wouldn’t be able to use it in my classroom. I agree with Rosenblatt’s stance on teachers promoting “real literary experiences for school related reading.” Pancakes, Pancakes! could easily provide a real life experience and connect into the social studies curriculum. Social studies is defined as the “study of human beings interacting with other humans, governments, communities, economics, and environments” (Johnson, pg.340). While discussing these interactions, Pancakes, Pancakes! would illustrate a way in which the interactions happen. For example, interactions exist between Jack and the miller to make flour from grain, as does the depiction of Jack being the farmer who provides milk, eggs, butter, jam, etc. for the community or grocery store. This story describes not only the obvious steps needed to make pancakes, but it also describes the amount of work done by many different individuals to provide ingredients and other things for the world. I would read this story to my class in a unit on human, community, economic, and environment interactions. We could together discuss the roles of the different people in the story and how they relate to and depict the roles of different people in our communities and society today. Through this discussion, we would connect the literature to real-life experiences that often go unnoticed, like the ease most people have of going to the store to buy butter without them knowing the amount of work it took someone to make it. Also, an extra credit or assignment opportunity could be to create the experience for the children at home by having them make pancakes from scratch with their families. Pancakes could even be made for a snack or lunch within the classroom. Lastly, a field trip could be taken to a farm or creamery of some kind to see the work of making ingredients in action. All of these ideas take the text of this story and turn them into a real-life experience for the reader.

References

Swafford, Jeanna. "Reading from Efferent and Aesthetic Stances." Talking Points (2005): 23-27. Print.

Johnson, Andrew P. "Glossary." Making Connections in Elementary and Middle School Social Studies. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2010. 340. Print.