Posted on by TracyC

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off cover

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off by Herman Parish, 2010.

Mr. Rogers has been watching a tv show called What’s Cooking? with Chef Du Jour, and there’s going to be a Bake-Off contest in town! Because Amelia Bedelia is so good at baking, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers think she should try to enter the contest.

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off contest announced on the tv show

She is a good baker, but Amelia Bedelia has already agreed to spend the day taking care of the bakery called Grace’s Cookie Jar with her Cousin Alcolu while Grace is out of town. Even though Amelia Bedelia is good at baking, it turns out that she isn’t any better at following someone else’s baking and recipe instructions than she is at following any other to do list written by someone else.

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off - Amelia meets her cousin at the bakery

When Amelia Bedelia meets Cousin Alcolu at the bakery, they read the notes that Grace left for them. The first note tells them to “start every recipe from scratch”, so of course, they have to scratch each other’s backs before they begin cooking. From there, Amelia Bedelia thinks that cutting a recipe for chocolate chip cookies in half means that they have to literally cut the recipe paper in half. Then, for good measure, Amelia Bedelia thinks they should cut all the chocolate chips in half, too.

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off - Amelia literally cuts a recipe in half

When Grace’s instructions ask them to bake “twelve pound cakes”, she assumes that she wants a cake that weighs 12 pounds instead of baking 12 small pound cakes. Fortunately, because that seems like such a big task, Cousin Alcolu suggests that they bake twelve one-pound cakes and just stack them, which is closer to what they’re actually supposed to do.

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off - Amelia and her cousin stack pound cakes

Amelia Bedelia and Cousin Alcolu get creative with decorating the cheesecakes because Amelia Bedelia doesn’t want to top them with cherries, like Grace asked. She just doesn’t think that cherries and cheese go together. Instead, they decorate them on the theme of cheese. Even though they don’t go about their baking in quite the way they’re supposed to, the things they make are still good.

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off - Amelia and her cousin decorate cheesecakes

At the end of the day, Amelia Bedelia is tired, but she bakes one last cake for the Bake-Off. Since she’s so tired, she uses that a creative theme for her “sheet” cake! The book includes the recipe for Amelia Bedelia’s Sheet Cake.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Amelia Bedelia Bakes Off - Amelia decorates a cake to look like a bed

My Reaction

Amelia Bedelia books are supposed to be ridiculous, playing off of expressions and words with multiple meanings. They aren’t really supposed to make sense so much as poke fun at Amelia Bedelia’s literal interpretations or confusion over instructions that other people give her.

I found this one a little out of character for Amelia Bedelia because one of her signature traits is that she’s good at baking. In other books, her baking skills often save her job or diffuse people’s anger at other instructions that she’s misinterpreted. Of all the things that Amelia Bedelia might understand, you would think she would know how to read a recipe. Although, admittedly, this isn’t the first time that she’s misunderstood something that someone else asked her to bake because she once cut up a calendar when she was asked to bake a “date cake”, apparently not understanding that dates are fruit. Now that I think about it, Amelia Bedelia also seems to bake her best dishes from memory, not usually consulting a recipe. Above all, though, there are a lot of baking and cooking expressions that would be fun to see Amelia Bedelia misinterpret (like when Amelia Bedelia pinches Cousin Alcolu when a recipe calls for a pinch of salt), and that’s what’s really the point of the story.

I did enjoy that, even though Amelia Bedelia and her cousin misinterpret Grace’s instructions, the things they make still taste good, and most of them are more or less what they’re supposed to be, like the cookies and the pound cakes.

Posted on by TracyC

Amelia Bedelia and the Baby

Amelia Bedelia and the Baby by Peggy Parish, pictures by Lynn Sweat, 1981.

A friend of Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Lane, asks Amelia Bedelia to babysit her baby. Amelia Bedelia says she doesn’t know anything about babies, but Mrs. Rogers says that Amelia Bedelia is good with children and points out that babies are also children. When she puts it that way, Amelia Bedelia agrees to babysit. Fortunately, she doesn’t have the idea that babysitting involves sitting on the baby, but being Amelia Bedelia, she finds plenty of ways to misinterpret the list of instructions that Mrs. Lane gives her for taking care of the baby.

When the baby starts to cry, Amelia Bedelia consults the list and sees that she’s supposed to give the baby a bottle. She worries that a baby might break a bottle, though. She tries giving the baby a box and a can instead, but of course, that doesn’t work. Fortunately, Mrs. Carter stops by to drop off some strawberries and helps to fix the baby a bottle.

Amelia Bedelia successfully manages to give the baby a bath but thinks that the instruction to use baby powder means that she should use it on herself and that putting on the baby’s bib means that she should wear it herself. Similarly, Amelia Bedelia thinks that the instruction for naptime mean that she should take a nap herself, and she refuses to do it because she hates naps. Instead, she decides to make strawberry tarts while the baby takes a nap in her play pen.

Amelia Bedelia has some misinterpretations about what the baby is supposed to eat, and when Mr. and Mrs. Lane arrive home, the baby is a mess. Mrs. Lane is upset, realizing that Amelia Bedelia doesn’t understand anything about babies and baby food, but her husband gives her one of Amelia Bedelia’s amazing strawberry tarts. That, and realizing that the baby likes Amelia Bedelia makes Mrs. Lane change her mind.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

Amelia Bedelia books aren’t supposed to be taken seriously. They’re just funny stories about the ways Amelia Bedelia misinterprets instructions people give her. She gets things wrong because she doesn’t understand certain expressions and words with multiple meanings.

In real life, putting someone like Amelia Bedelia in charge of a baby would be a complete disaster, and it could even be dangerous to the baby. Although things work out with the food Amelia Bedelia gives the baby, a real baby could choke on food they’re not old enough to handle. I couldn’t really blame Mrs. Lane for being upset when she realizes that she put someone who didn’t know what they were doing in charge of her small child. No real parents would be willing to let the matter go or invite her to come back in those circumstances just because they liked her strawberry tarts. However, because this is just meant to be a humorous story, everything works out okay in the end.

I did think it was kind of funny, in hindsight, that they never made any jokes about a babysitter sitting on the baby, which would be the kind of literal interpretation that Amelia Bedelia does. They probably couldn’t make that joke because, if Amelia Bedelia made any comment about that, nobody, not even Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, would dare leave Amelia Bedelia in charge of an infant. They also probably wouldn’t want kids to think that might be a funny thing to do. They also never made any jokes about “changing” the baby or having Amelia Bedelia wonder in what way she was supposed to be changed. That’s probably all for the best.

Posted on by TracyC

Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping

Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping by Peggy Parish, 1985.

Mr. and Mrs. Rogers are going camping, and they take along their maid/housekeeper, Amelia Bedelia. Amelia Bedelia has never been camping before, and she brings along her unique habit of taking things too literally or misinterpreting instructions as Mr. and Mrs. Rogers explain to her what she needs to do while camping.

When Mr. Rogers tries to teach her how to catch a fish, he doesn’t tell her right away that they need to use fishing poles, so Amelia Bedelia just jumps right into the stream and grabs a fish right out of the water. It’s actually kind of an amazing accomplishment, but Mr. Rogers is stunned when Amelia Bedelia lets the fish go, not realizing that they were supposed to keep what they catch. She thought the activity was only about catching.

When Amelia Bedelia is sent to “pitch the tent”, she meets some boys, who say that they’ve heard of Amelia Bedelia. Even knowing that she’s pitching the tent wrong, by simply throwing it and letting it come down wherever it lands, the boys happily participate. When they suggest to Amelia Bedelia that maybe they should move the tent or throw it again when it lands in the bushes, Amelia Bedelia says that isn’t necessary because the tent is conveniently out of the way there.

Amelia Bedelia also gets confused about starting a fire with pine cones because Mr. Rogers didn’t say to use a match, and she thinks “rowing a boat” means to put all the boats in a row. She also doesn’t understand that tent stakes aren’t the same as meat steaks and thinks that sleeping bags are bags that are asleep. The only order that I know that Amelia Bedelia refuses to obey is Mr. Rogers’s order to “go jump in the lake”, and that’s only because she is out of dry clothes! Fortunately, where Amelia shines is preparing a picnic feast for Mr. Rogers’s birthday!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

The Amelia Bedelia books all poke fun at words with multiple meanings and the literal ways that Amelia Bedelia misinterprets various expressions. As with some of the other Amelia Bedelia books, though, the whole premise of the book is based on Amelia Bedelia not only getting confused about the proper meanings of words but also having no knowledge of the subject at hand. Amelia Bedelia doesn’t know what tent stakes are or what pitching a tent involves because she’s never been camping before. In spite of that, even knowing that Amelia Bedelia has no experience in camping and how she usually interprets instructions she doesn’t fully understand, Mr. Rogers assigns her tasks which he should know that she has no idea how to do. Not only does Amelia Bedelia never learn to check her understanding of what other people mean, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers never really learn that they have to teach Amelia Bedelia what she needs to know to do a task and check to make sure that she understands.

As with other books in this series, though, Amelia Bedelia’s cooking skills save the day and her job with Mr. and Mrs. Rogers! Maybe Amelia Bedelia should have just gotten a job in a bakery or something, but then again, she also messes up cooking instructions whenever she tries to do what someone else told her rather than just doing things the way she’s accustomed to doing them.

Posted on by TracyC

Amelia Bedelia

Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, 1963.

Amelia Bedelia is just starting her new job as a maid with Mr. and Mrs. Rogers! Mr. and Mrs. Rogers can’t be there to supervise her on her first day, but Mrs. Rogers leaves her a list of things to do and tells her to do exactly what the list says. Little does Mrs. Rogers know just how literal Amelia Bedelia can be!

When Amelia Bedelia reads that she’s suppose to “change the towels”, she thinks that she’s supposed to change the way they look instead of replacing them with new ones. To Amelia Bedelia “dust the furniture” means to add dust to the furniture instead of removing it. The instruction to “draw the drapes” sounds like she should draw a picture of them instead of closing them.

When Mr. and Mrs. Rogers return to see how Amelia Bedelia is doing, they are shocked at what she’s done!

There is only one thing that can save Amelia Bedelia’s job: her ability to make an amazing lemon meringue pie!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This is the very first book in the Amelia Bedelia series, and I remember reading it when I was a kid. The point of the Amelia Bedelia books is to introduce kids to expressions and words that have multiple meanings. They’re pretty funny to read, although even as a kid, I had trouble believing some of the phrases that Amelia Bedelia takes literally. For example, when she “dusts” the furniture, she thinks that Mrs. Rogers should have told her to “undust” the furniture instead. I see what the author is saying, that it’s funny that we say “dust” the furniture when we’re actually removing dust instead of adding it, but I’ve never heard anybody in real life use the term “undust” the furniture. Amelia Bedelia is funny, but sometimes, it seems like it’s reaching a little to find terms she can credibly misinterpret.

I also don’t think I fully understood the parts about trimming the fat on the steak and dressing the chicken as a kid because I wasn’t used to cooking. I think I got the concept that she was supposed to cut the fat off the steak rather than decorate it as one might trim a Christmas tree (a concept that Amelia Bedelia interprets the opposite way in her Christmas story). What she was supposed to do with the chicken she ended up “dressing” in clothes was a little more confusing. When I was a kid, I knew that people make stuffing or dressing to put in poultry, like chicken or turkey, when they cook it, or they can rub herbs and spices under the skin for flavoring, and I think that’s what Amelia Bedelia was supposed to do here. Even so, there are different types of stuffing or dressing to make and different mixtures of herbs and spices to use, and Mrs. Rogers doesn’t say what kind she wants. Of course, if she was more specific, Amelia Bedelia couldn’t have gotten so confused, and that’s really the point of the story.

I don’t know whether any teachers still use Amelia Bedelia books as examples of words and phrases with multiple meanings, but they are fun in that fashion. A good accompanying activity for these books is a project that I had when I was in school and that I’ve heard students still do – explain how to make a peanut butter sandwich (or any other kind of sandwich) to someone from another planet, who has no idea what a sandwich is or how to make one. Students doing this activity need to be as careful and detailed as they can because some phrases are easy to misinterpret if you assume that the person you’re talking to has no idea how anything works. I remember my old teacher would act out our instructions literally, almost like Amelia Bedelia. For example, if you said, “Put peanut butter on bread” without saying that you need to open the jar first and remove the peanut butter from the jar with a knife, the teacher would set the whole jar of peanut butter on top of the bread and just stare at it. If you explain the peanut butter sandwich instructions well enough that there’s no room for misinterpretation, you may have a future in technical writing!

The pattern established in this first book continues through other books in the series. In many other Amelia Bedelia stories, Amelia Bedelia misinterprets instructions she’s given by taking things too literally or misunderstanding words with multiple meanings, but she always manages to keep her job because she’s really good at baking and makes cakes, pies, and other treats that Mr. and Mrs. Rogers love.

If you read the 50th Anniversary edition of the book, there’s a section in the back about the Amelia Bedelia series and how it’s changed over the years!