All Four Stars by Tara Dairman

This is a delightful book about a young girl who is passionate about cooking. Unfortunately, she ends up setting the kitchen curtains ablaze and is grounded by her fast food loving parents. Before she can get back to the kitchen Gladys has to start behaving like 'normal' girl, make some friends and play with them. As a school assignment she writes a letter of application to work as a food critic. It somehow manages to cross the desk of the food editor who hires her as a freelancer to review a cake shop. How she will manage to accomplish this is something you will have to read the book to find out. 

What I liked about this book:
It's a perfectly fun elementary school novel. It shows characters as multidimensional. I was worried at first at how the parents are portrayed. (reminiscent of Matilda's parents from the Roald Dahl novel) Thankfully they are seen to be quite reasonable and even flexible adults by the end of the book. Did I mention that I liked the ending to this one? I like that her parents ended up getting what they wanted for Gladys, but Gladys got what she needed also. 

What I didn't like:
About two thirds through, I started wanting to see the recipes for all the fabulous food Gladys was cooking up. Alas, they are not in the book. They are available at Daiman's website here, but I would have liked for them to have been in the book either within the specific chapter or in an appendix.
I hate that I have to wait for the sequel!


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