Marigold Bakes a Cake by Mike Malbrough (review)

Marigold the cat's favorite day of the week is Monday, because Mondays are for baking. With everything in his sunny green and yellow kitchen set up just so, and his purple polka-dot bowtie perfectly tied, Marigold gets ready to bake the most "fur-sheddingly fabulous" cake ever—but the birds in his neighborhood have other ideas. Marigold's tail gets poofier and his orange fur more disheveled as first a finch, then some pigeons, and finally some loons invade his kitchen, and he abandons his cake to chase the laughing, apron-clad birds away from his confectionery masterpiece (which is rather less than a masterpiece after Marigold's "full on feline frenzy"). Clever text (with occasional playful rhymes) follows the illustrations around the page, swirling with chocolate shavings and molasses as Marigold mixes his batter and growing into huge orange letters with his furious yowl. The lush, textured watercolors match the energy of the story, from spot illustrations of Marigold following each step in his recipe with serene concentration to chaotic spreads of the frazzled feline flinging himself at his unwelcome avian guests. Kids will giggle over the antics of both cat and birds during readalouds and will find plenty of humorous details to discover in the illustrations on their own. Probably best to direct them to other recipes than Marigold's for their baking experiments.