A trip to the past through the European country Italy. In animated water color illustrations, the author explain how the Pizza Margherita was created with the best ingredients found in Naples to please the Queen. An excellent true story, to share with readers of all levels and perhaps for making a cooking project to experience step by step the process for making pizza and build vocabulary. Students can make connections and relate to their experiences eating pizzas at home, school, and restaurants, as well as those connections with places in their communities. Ingredients like the cheeses presented from Italy can be compared to those here in Oregon, and extend a lesson perhaps doing a field trip to Tillamook to observe and learn about the processes of making cheeses. Literacy lessons can be also tide to math when introducing fractions to higher grades. I really enjoy those Italian words thrown here and there, and how the story if read aloud can engage students into thinking how to solve Raffaele’s problem when the cat eats his anchovies. A fun story of a man who tries his best to make other people happy!

Pizza maker Raffaele Esposito is known througout Napoli, Italy, for his pies. One day a mesenger of Queen Margherita announces that the Queen has heard of Raffaele's pies and wants to know what the fuss is all about. Raffaele is instructed to have a pizza ready for the queen that evening. He visits various shopowners to purchase the ingredients for the pie. Each suggests the best most expensive ingredients but Raffaele decides that if the queen wants to taste the pizza that Napoli eats, he will not diverge from his recipe. The pies meet with the Queen's approval and Raffaele enjoys a surge in business especially for his new Pizza Margherita, a pie fit for the queen. Recipe included.

This scrumptious tale tells the story of how the pizza margherita came to be. Set in old world Italy, the tale loosely follows a real incident of how a pizza maker was called upon to make a pizza for Queen Margherita. A fun and informative read.