Sweet story and fun whimsical illustrations. ( )

Folk like in illustrative rendition, The muted, flat like images are lovely to behold. Avid readers will appreciate this tale of Ida whose first love is books. Nothing can entice her away from a good book. Ida is pretty and well read. Alfonso would love to court her, but getting her attention away from the pages is difficult.

All the usual modes of catching a woman's attention do not work on Ida. She is not drawn to guitar music; flowers don't thrill her, and butterflies are simply background images which don't distract her from a good story line.

Finally, stubborn in his intent, Alfonso bakes a cake. Collecting all fresh items for the special apple cake, Alfonso decided to bake Ida a cake and went to great lengths to collect the apples, eggs, sugar and the butter.

Alfonso is an intelligent man who decides to give added attention to the batter. Adding wishes and he turned the ingredients, he called for one part bitter and two parts sweet. Finally, the smell of the cake lured Ida to stop reading and to pay attention to Alfonso.

While the reader doesn't know the outcome of Alfonso's endeavors, at least he got the princess to stop and notice. ( )

Highly Recommended

Ida is beautiful and brilliant and she loves to read! Nothing is more interesting than her books, not even Alfonso; who really likes Ida. He tries to woo her with flowers, guitar music and butterflies, but Ida ignores him. Alfonso decided to bake Ida a cake and went to great lengths to collect the apples, butter, sugar and eggs. He also stirred in three wishes, “one bitter and two sweet.” The delicious smell made Ida put down her book and notice Alfonso. The reader would assume that they fell in love.

The story is just really cute. Little ones will love the words, colors and pictures. I like that the girl loves to read! The art work reminds me of Eastern European folk art. It’s clean, colorful and pretty. The artwork is seemingly simple along with the simple message of love. It would make for a perfect pre-school or kindergarten read aloud. The book ends with a recipe for Apple Cake…just like the title. It would be a special treat to have the apple cake available after the story ☺ It would also make a good Valentine’s Day book display or just any other love themed book display. There is an AR test for those students who like to take the quizzes. I think this is a great book for a school library. ( )

The way to a woman's heart. Lovely. ( )