Blaze and the Castle Cake for Bertha Daye has all of the full-page ultra-detailed art that one expects from Claude Ponti. Reading this along with a young child, you could spend hours looking at every little detail - the illustrations of the story, but also the hidden jokes, the references to other characters, and just the tiny flourishes that make up the backgrounds.

The translation, by Alyson Waters and Margot Kerlidou valiantly attempts to keep Ponti's word play. Unfortunately, keeping both the meaning and the play is always a challenge, and some of the choices land a bit awkwardly down to the title itself ("Bertha" just doesn't have the neutrality of "Anne" even if it keeps the birthday/anniversaire pun). But that's a minor complaint with a book like this where the art is 90% of the reason to pick it up.

Really cute! Felt like a cross between where's Waldo and Rube Goldberg, with a side of the smurfs. The ducks were quite cute and I liked the mini-narratives (like the ballooning ducks) that were carried over page after page.

5 *stars*

Since I have a small reader growing up at home, I definitely started looking at children's books. I want to read them before I pass it on to the little one. This book is very cute and delightful. The illustrations are a bit like "Where's Waldo", where there's a lot to see on the page, the only difference being that there are small golden "chicklets" here.
In life, this book illustration is definitely much more beautiful than from the Kindle!

Thank you!

Thank you, Archipelago and the author, for the advance reading copy.

This book took me by surprise. I haven't read a storybook with the illustrations taking over entirely for each page! And it's like an unbelievable dreamlike story for me when I opened the book.

The characters remind me so much of the minions! It's fun to see so many of the chicklets.

The story provides a good representation of how a community works in order to build something big and important.

An awesome read.