The Twelve Little Cakes in Around the World in 80 Books

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May 26, 2011 Daisy rated it liked it

Shelves: czech-slovak, knitters-mentioned, eastern-european-challenge-2011, dance, east-bloc-memoir, mushrooms

The narrator or voice of this memoir is a very small, talkative girl between the ages of 3 and 7. She reminds me of a Czech Ramona the Pest with her curiosity and innocence and penchant for saying whatever's on her mind so that it often gets her into trouble. But her adventures are East Bloc, not Ramona Quimby, small-town-USA scrapes. She's resourceful and courageous. She'll befriend anyone from three lonely grandmothers to a goat from a nearby farm to a group of Polish children whose language s The narrator or voice of this memoir is a very small, talkative girl between the ages of 3 and 7. She reminds me of a Czech Ramona the Pest with her curiosity and innocence and penchant for saying whatever's on her mind so that it often gets her into trouble. But her adventures are East Bloc, not Ramona Quimby, small-town-USA scrapes. She's resourceful and courageous. She'll befriend anyone from three lonely grandmothers to a goat from a nearby farm to a group of Polish children whose language she tries to imitate by lisping her own Czech. She's a little misfit who's observant and a tireless conversationalist. The first chapter starts out almost too cute but the book, which has more the feeling of a novel than a non-fiction memoir, gathers steam and the details of her family's life are interesting and enlightening. The little cakes of the title are mentioned in every chapter only in passing so that you've forgotten about them until they happen to turn up again, and that's kind of charming. Because, lest we forget, cakes are important in every political system.
3.85 stars

In situations like this, I've always found that brute force and ignorance can work wonders. (says her father) p. 85

... As there weren't any kids my age to play with, I had no choice but to make my own entertainment. There was an old wooden bench in Mrs. Nova's backyard, so what I ended up doing was playing school with the cats.
... There was one particularly mean, young tomcat whose black-and-ginger fur looked like a flannel shirt, and he took great delight in disrupting my class. Every time I tried to put him on the bench, he would hiss and try to scratch my arms. The afternoons were very hot, so the four house cats and a couple of the friendlier ones were happy to sprawl and fall asleep. I would pat them and tell them all the things I knew. I could count to twenty. I could write my name on a piece of paper. I could name all the colors, even purple and orange, and I knew that Prague was the capital of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, while Bratislava was the capital of the Slovak part. All in all, I was a very good teacher. p. 187

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Aug 25, 2010 Lori rated it it was amazing

Shelves: faves, absolute-faves

One of my top 5 reads!

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Oct 15, 2020 Kristen marked it as to-read

Shelves: non-fiction, memoirs, international, request-ipl

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Around the World in 80 Books