Author: Polly Horvath
Title: Everything on a Waffle
Illustrator: None
Genre: Picture Book
Subgenre: Comedy and Humor Fiction
Theme: Self-Esteem and adapting to new situations
Primary and Secondary Characters: Primrose Squarp, Uncle Jack, Miss Honeycut, Miss Perfidy, Miss Bowzer, Evie and Burt, Primrose’s parents
Awards: Newbery Honor Book, National Book Award Finalist
Publishing Company: Scholastic Inc.
Date of Publication: 2001
Brief Summary and How to Use With Students:
After her parents go missing during a storm at sea Primrose is now orphaned and living with her Uncle Jack. Everyone in Coal Harbour believes that her parents have died but Primrose believes that they are still alive. This tends to make her life even more difficult but luckily she can seek sanctuary at the local restaurant “The Girl in the Red Swing”. As she waits for her parents to return Primrose faces a series of misadventures that allow her to see the world and the people around her in a different light.
At the end of every chapter Primrose writes down an easy to make recipe that you can make for your class, or that you can make together. Another idea is to read the book as if the students were in a book club. Each week students have a certain amount of pages or chapters to read and to discuss. Once the class has finished the book you can have a party and bring in many of the recipes at once to let the students sample them.
Other activities you can do are to ask students what they anticipate to happen in the story by looking at the cover. Once they have finished the story ask students to create a new cover for the book that would represent what they think is the main theme. Read the description of Primrose, and then have students write a similar paragraph about themselves. Make a class cook book.
