My impromptu pancake art for the parent and toddler group this morning consisted of colouring/drawing a face on a circle of paper and sticking on a couple of lollypop sticks for arms (and legs, and hair, in the case of one wee girl who really got into it). And calling it a pancake man helped too.
But the real fun came from the retelling of The Big Pancake, a classic fairy story which happens to be part of the Ladybird 606D "Well-Loved Tales" series of the 1970s. Sadly I own very few of these books for my children to enjoy, and although I wish they could see the wonderful artwork by Robert Lumley and Eric Winter, the stories themselves are fondly emblazoned onto my memory from my own childhood.
The Big Pancake is a tale of a pancake cooked up for seven hungry little boys who end up chasing it down the street. In a similar fashion to The Gingerbread Boy the pancake is chased by various people and animals who want to eat it up but it rolls on down the street refusing to stop until a savvy pig offers to accompany the pancake into a forest. The pancake accepts a ride across the river on the pig's snout, and snap, the pig gobbles him up. If only he'd read The Gingerbread Boy he would have surely seen this coming (though the cunning beneficiary was a fox in that story, I think). As with so many of these stories, the greatest enjoyment comes from the repetition and simplicity that makes children feel like the story is an old favourite from just a few pages in.
If you do look for a copy of this story I would strongly recommend picking up an earlier Ladybird edition as the publishers replaced the vastly superior Lumley illustrations in later editions for some unfathomable reason. Or maybe that's the nostalgia speaking.
In case you were wondering, we did eat pancakes today too. Our lovely neighbour threw a little pancake party, though Girl was only interested in chewing a magazine and Boy spent the entire evening demanding chocolate cake - he'd seen me bring over the remaining cookie cups we made yesterday. I got mine though...and it was a delicious pancake!
oh i remember that book! would like a copy if you can find one.
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