Gillian Engberg (Booklist, Dec. 15, 2002 (Vol. 99, No. 8))
In this picture book for older children Arnold uses whimsical drawings and a lively text to introduce Alexis Soyer, one of the most accomplished and celebrated cooks in nineteenth-century Europe. She follows the chef's fascinating career, from his apprenticeship to his cooking for the aristocracy to his move to London's upper-crust Reform Club, where his cuisine and innovative kitchen designs brought him world renown. Arnold also includes insight into Soyer's wildly creative activities as a social reformer: he trained "charitable women" how to cook soup for the poor, wrote socially conscious cookbooks, created portable soup kitchens for the Irish during the potato famine, and completely revolutionized the way food was prepared for hospitals and the military (he cooked for the troops during the Crimean War). Unfortunately, there are neither source notes nor an author's note to support the well-shaped, animated text, which is filled with dialogue. But Arnold's clean-lined, watercolor-and-pen illustrations, several per page, sparkle with lavishly depicted banquets, close-ups of Soyer's inventions (including a cross-section of the elaborate Reform Club kitchen), and portraits of the chef that, like the narrative, give a sense of Soyer's complexity--his talent, energy, flamboyance, and heart. A unique, delightful offering that will work well with Alice Waters' Fanny at Chez Panisse (1993), which Arnold illustrated. Category: Books for Middle Readers--Nonfiction. 2002, Farrar/Frances Foster, $17. Gr. 3-6.