GUY FRIDAY- Lights, Cameras, Cook!

Harper, Cherise Mericle. Lights, Cameras, Cook!
July 18th 2017 by HMH Books for Young Readers
E ARC from Edelweiss Above the Treeline

Caroline, Rae, Oliver and Tate are contestants on the high stakes Next Best Junior Chef television program. They are competing on a television show judeged by world class chefs, so they are all very nervous. Tate is only nine, so he has a lot of energy and sometimes less than ideal behavior, Oliver is the self-proclaimed "King of Calm", and Caroline and Rae are both rather nervous. All of the children work together on the various challenges and are good sports, which is great to see, and there's lots of details about both television filming and cooking. Winners of challenges get to choose kitchen gadgets, and there is a lot of inventive food described. Unfortunately, I read a digital ARC of this, and since there are a fair number of illustrations, it loaded slowly, making it difficult to go back and get details.
Strengths: Lots of good details about so many things! Readers who enjoyed Ganeshram's Stir It Up will love this one. There are a lot of cooking themed books for upper middle grade readers, so this one was nice to see. Elementary schools will definitely want this, and it's great for avid cooks in middle school as well.
Weaknesses: Nine year old master chefs? Not in my world. Of course, I hate to cook. Why spend all that time when you could just have an apple and a can of tuna? That said, when I was younger I loved to read cookbooks, so I can see the appeal.
What I really think: I wish I could post interior illustrations, but they aren't photographing well from my Nook. There are interviews with the children that definitely made me think about the old Betty Crocker kids' cookbooks. I really wonder if those were the inspiration for the Aurélie Blard-Quintard illustrations!

http://mrpeacockstyle.blogspot.com/2009/06/boys-and-girls-cookbook.html