Posted on by TracyC

Peter and the Wolf

Peter and the Wolf by Walt Disney Productions, 1974.

This is the picture book version of Disney’s cartoon from 1946 based on Peter and the Wolf, which was originally a musical symphony for children, written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936 for the Central Children’s Theatre in Moscow.

Young Peter lives with his grandfather near a forest in Russia. Peter’s grandfather warns him to stay away from the forest because there are hungry wolves there, but Peter thinks that he can catch a wolf himself. One day, while his grandfather is asleep, Peter sneaks out of the house to go catch a wolf.

Along the way, Peter’s friend, Sasha the bird, also warns him that there really are dangerous wolves in the woods and that he can’t hope to catch one with his toy gun. Peter insists that he’s going to try anyway, and Sasha says he’ll go along and help.

As they venture further, they are also joined by Sonia the duck. Ivan the cat tries to eat Sasha, but Peter makes him let Sasha go. Then, suddenly, a wolf appears!

The wolf chases Sonia, and at first, the others think he actually caught and ate her. They manage to catch the wolf by the tail. Sasha attracts some help from some passing hunters.

At first, the hunters want to shoot the wolf, but Peter asks them to take the wolf to the zoo instead, realizing that the wolf was just hungry. It tuns out that Sonia is safe after all, and they all take the wolf to show Peter’s grandfather.

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

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Thunder Cake

ThunderCake

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco, 1990.

A girl talks about how her grandmother, who she likes to call “Babushka” because she originally came from Russia, cured her of her fear of storms by teaching her to make a special kind of cake, Thunder Cake.

The girl is staying with her grandmother on her farm in Michigan during the summer, and the sound of thunder terrifies the girl so much that she just wants to hide under the bed.  However, her grandmother insists that the girl come out and help her gather the ingredients for her Thunder Cake.

ThunderCakeGrandma

The grandmother explains to the girl how to tell how far away a storm is by counting the seconds between when she sees a flash of lightning and when she hears the sound of thunder.  She also says that they need to get the cake ready by the time the storm actually arrives, so they’d better hurry.

ThunderCakeIngredients

Keeping track of how close the storm is and getting all the ingredients together to make the cake helps to keep the girl busy, and by the time the storm actually arrives, she is no longer afraid.

ThunderCakeFinished

The pictures are an interesting combination of pencil drawings and bright colors.  The faces and hands of the girl and her grandmother are completely in pencil, but their clothes and everything around them are painted.

I didn’t include the recipe for Thunder Cake here because the book is still in print, and I have kind of a rule that I don’t include recipes from books that are still in print.  However, this recipe is one of the more well-known ones from children’s literature, and it’s pretty widely available on the Internet, some with pictures of the cakes people made from this recipe.  For example, this blog has a nice article about this book with helpful notes for those who want to try to make the cake.  This site also has the recipe along with some comments from others who tried it.  I was surprised the first time I read it that one of the ingredients in the chocolate cake was tomatoes, but the consensus seems to be that they are really necessary to make this cake properly.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.