Fifty Books, #1: Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake

 

You will not find Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake: A Hallmark Pop-Up Book (by Dean Wally; illustrated by Susan Stoehr Morris) [Youtube storytime link] on any list of classics, or must-reads, or Best Children's Books of the 20th Century. It has been out of print for decades, and no one, as far as I can see, is clamoring for it to be brought back. It doesn't even have a listing on WorldCat, the worldwide catalog of library holdings.

And back when it *was* in print? It was published not by a venerable Big Five publishing house, or a cool edgy indie press, but by: Hallmark. Yes, a greeting card company is responsible for this title.

God, I loved the crap out of this book. Still do, TBH.

I can't be the only one, either. Else, why would used copies be selling for upwardsof $50 a pop? I mean, it is a pop-up book --haha, no pun intended)-- and those are harder to preserve over the course of (gods help me) 55-odd years [n.b. I'm not sure exactly when Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake was first published. There is no copyright date on my copy of the book. One online source puts it at 1979, but that can't possibly be correct, as I couldn't have been more than five or six when, by whatever means - maybe at the supermarket?- it found its way into my tiny little preschool hands and thence into my heart, forever.]

So, you may be wondering, what is this marvelous tale?

Well, it's the story of red-haired little Cindy Hicks, aged "almost six," who, finding herself with nothing to do one afternoon, decides to bake a cake. Since Cindy's reach exceeds her literacy-related grasp, her recipe turns out somewhat improvisational, and includes "a pound of flour, at least--/Baking soda, chocolate syrup / And a dozen cakes of YEAST!!!" [capitalization and emphases in the original text] [and yes, this is a rhyming picture book. I know, it is sounding more and more twee. But there's just something about it, I tell you.]

That's it. That's the tweet book. It does what it says on the tin: Cindy bakes a [funny] cake, yeast-related mayhem ensues, and then (spoiler alert) all is saved by her big sister, who was upstairs on the phone the whole time. Basically, it's a retelling of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice,"-- a little like the venerable Strega Nona, by the venerable Tomie De Paola, except that Strega Nona didn't come out until 1975, and by then I was deep into full-length novels, thankyouverymuch, and would have scorned to read a picture book. 

What makes this book so special? Why, having long lost my original copy (which, if memory serves, I had also written the page numbers on in red magic marker), was I willing to shell out for a used edition and have it shipped all the way up here to the Northlands so I can continue to reread and cherish it into my golden years?

I think a lot of it is the slightly Mary-Engelbreit-esque pop-up illustrations. The hardest part of composing this blog post has been not including photos of every. single. magical. page of Cindy and her sweet hopeful little face and her red polka-dot hair bow and her mustard-and-green 60s kitchen.There's one page where Cindy is kneeling on the (green) kitchen counter, and when you pull the pull tab, the (green) kitchen cabinet door opens and Cindy's arms reach forward so she can gather the ingredients and it is just for some reason so charming. The world needs more cooking-themed pop-up books. 

But my very favorite page, the one that encapsulates the magic of Cindy Bakes a Funny Cake, is the third full-page spread, in which we see the eponymous cake baking in the oven. When you pull the tab at the bottom of the page, the batter POPS[!!!] right out of the oven door, and you begin to see the implications -- fully realized in the subsequent pages - of ALL THAT PINK CAKE DOUGH TAKING OVER EVERYTHING. It's like the twee-est ever horror story. 

  

n.b.: In all the years I loved this book, I'd never given any thought to the author, Dean Walley. When I did look up his name, in preparing for this post, I found that he was actually quite a prolific author, and wrote many other picture books, mostly for Hallmark. He was never famous, but he had what sounds like a fulfiling and meaningful life filled with words and stories. He lived until 2017, and you can read his obituary here.