A Piece of Cake

Pop-up book by David Pelham.

Let's look at this book so you'll know how to appreciate it when you're reading it to your grandkids and they're sticking their little fingers into it exploring its details. Your impulse will be to say, "Don't touch," but they must.

The cover of the book is annoyingly and expensively in the shape of a slice of cake. This was important to the author, Pelham knows the novelty of the book's shape is important to children, but it is disliked by everyone else. It added ridiculously to cost of production. I'm assuming. It's a mess on the bookshelf and must be set aside by itself. I removed the offending cardboard panel that forms the puffed up shape and by doing destroyed the cover of my copy but at least it behaves like a book and it fits on a shelf properly with no further special attention. Had I known back then that the price for used copies would be so high now I would have rethought that decision. Presently lowest is $21.00 + shipping and I doubt I paid nearly that much. Abebooks has one lower presently. I should buy it just to pass to these two little kids who live here. 

Bought it. Now I'll have two copies. One in the shape of a cake to give away. They'll love it. I don't even know them, hardly see them around, very quiet, but I know that they're going to love this little book. Now I can't wait. I already have planned how through 3rd party the little book can be given without causing any alarm.

Other than its unfortunate cover it is a tight little book. Most mechanisms are simple and one per page but a lot of action is packed into each one. Each little thing is loaded with mouse-art. Individual mouse characters in costume within the pod of little mice are established early and maintain throughout. The story is simple A to B and told in simple clips one to the next. Children will realize early what is happening to the group of mice and see for themselves what the mice do not see; the cake diminishing on its way to the party. Gripping drama right there for kids. Children paying attention will know that no cake will be left. 

The opening page we see right off the subject will be a dessert plate of cake of interest to mice in their bedclothes. 

The first page of story action a postman-mouse delivers a letter. The text is ballad in iambic lines that rhyme telling a story about a mice adventure of carrying a slice of cake across a harrowing landscape fraught with dangers to attend an important family birthday party at a nearby farm, a great distance for mice. Not much is going on the page, when you open the door yourself the whole group of mice pour out. The postal letter is a big deal for mice.

They're mice. Too young. Can't read. The postman-mouse reads the letter to them.

"Why certainly," the Postmouse smiled;

"Now let me see… ah yes…

From four till eight, and don't be late.

Please come in fancy dress."

This clever page of the human party in action is for adult enjoyment. It shows a woman slumped into a chair with her legs crossed carelessly, it's been a hard party, she can't take the sugar and she slides the plate under the chair while her other arm lifts a drink to her mouth, her face flips with the cup now in front of her face as if hiding her face conceals the act of ditching the cake.  This is how the mice get the cake. It was put there on the floor by a woman who just doesn't care about proper uneaten cake plate placement.

The mice take the cake off the plate, have a few bites, and slip past the cat and through the cat flap. 

In the dark woods the housemouse kids encounter woodsmouse who offers personal guidance through the woods and the night. At dawn  on the next page the woodsmouse hacks off a piece of cake as payment for his services.

The housemouse children notice an advertisement and take up at a bed and breakfast. The B&B served them their own cake for breakfast. Refreshed, they hit the road and notice their load is lighter. The group encounters a fieldmouse that offers to show them the way. She guides them through her field and then sits down and asks them, now, "what's for tea?"  She has bug juice for their picnic and suggests the mice contribute cake. The video does not show the wooden gate open. Too bad. Little fingers would reach in to flip the gate, to see, but this book reviewer is not interested, he flips right past, had he shown then we'd  see the front detail of all the mice characters and there is a lot of detail in their "fancy clothes," it shows another mouse turning with the gate as a hinge itself, and it shows the deep focus of the picnic bug juice tea party in the background, an before/after, climb the gate, then the party, both shown at once. double page, but the reviewer does not show this eloquent touch of non-pop-uppery. 

The housemice meet the Churchmouse vicar.

This tiny book is British as hell without even trying; different specific types of mice identified by location, house, field, church, cat flap, bug juice for tea, vicar. Where you expect the churchmouse to take his tithe of the cake instead the vicar absolves the housemice of guilt and comforts them in their slow realization their cake is already gone. He is sure the Lord will provide for He works in mysterious ways. 

The last pop-up page is largest double page denouement with cast collected and with new characters and  deus ex machina grandmum mouse upon the scene with heavenly solution of a fully prepared cheesecake that takes center stage. Whoever would have thought of that, a cake made of cheese? 

The economy in the pop-ups with its loaded art content is impressive. I would like to tell a tight story like this to my nephews in this form. For such a tiny small-person's book it sure packs a lot into it. This last page has an element I've not seen anywhere else, a bit of origami, a small V pillar mechanism folded in half and doubled to form the body of a mouse in a clown suit bent at the waist that looks for all the world like it is sitting on the edge in the crack between pages and hangs its legs over the edge toward the viewer. That little mouse origami could be inserted similarly into nearly any correspondence to very good effect.