In Aunt Lucy’s Kitchen

by Cynthia Rylant
1998 / 56 pages
Rating: GOOD/Great/Give

Three nine-year-old cousins are staying with their Aunt Lucy, and wondering what sort of fun they can cook up. When Lily comes up with the idea of a cookie company, Rosie and Tess are quickly on board. And all it takes to convince their Aunt is the promise of some free Cinnamon Crinkles, her favorite.

It’s this enthusiasm, right from the start, that most appeals in this “The Cobble Street Cousins” series. All 6 books are low on the drama – no fights or conflict – but high on the creativity, with the three girls always eager to build on each other’s ideas. Lily is the writer, so she composes a poem to help them advertise their cookies:

Cookies to your door,
Who could ask for more,
Aunt Lucy’s girls will bake for you
Cinnamon Crinkles, sweet and true
Call us for a Baker’s dozen
We’ll bring them over with no fussin!

This is just the first of Lily’s works, and while not her best (one of the others prompted my youngest to blurt out, “That was a really good poem!”) it gets the word out. And then the orders start a’coming!

Their first delivery is to a young man stuck on his couch with his leg in a cast. The outgoing Tess just has to know how it happened, and before long the girls have learned the man’s name (Michael) and his occupation (he studies plants), and they find out that he has visited their aunt’s flower shop but been too shy to really talk with her.

That, of course, gets the girls thinking, and before long they’ve figured out a way to have the two of them meet: the girls will have a performance and invite the neighborhood!

There are 5 others in this Cobble Street Cousins series, all just as sweet. They are, in order:

1. In Aunt Lucy’s Kitchen
2. A Little Shopping
3. Special Gifts
4. Some Good News
5. Summer Party
6. Wedding Flowers

In #4, the girls start their own newspaper, which got my middlest doing so as well. She described the whole series as “inspiring.”

Cautions

The one caution concerns the cousins’ parents, or more specifically, their absence. Whether it is Peter Pan, Frozen, or The Green Ember, a common theme in kids’ stories is for the parents to be conveniently out of the way. That’s because it will be harder for children to have big adventures if their big folk are still around to keep them safe. Sometimes the absence is because the parents are dead (Pollyanna) or desperate times have required desperate measures (WWII bombings in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). But in the Cobble Street Cousins series, the three girls are with their aunt because their parents are professional dancers doing a year-long tour. My kids didn’t notice that this was a lame reason to leave your kids behind for a year… but I wanted them to notice because this is the “career over kids” misplaced priority that the world is so often pitching. To disarm it, we need to be able to recognize it. In addition, Tess only has a mom, and her dad’s complete absence – no explanation is offered as to whether her dad is dead, or her parents are divorced – is odd.

Conclusion

While these will only appeal to girls (girls read boy books, but a boy wouldn’t dare be caught reading a book about three girl cousins!), they most certainly will appeal. And at between 56 and 72 pages long, these are a nice digestible size for Grades 2 through 4.

I’ll also note that our family really enjoyed them as a bedtime read – the Cobble Street cousins are gentle, happy girls, who will inspire pleasant dreams!

Cyntia Rylant has also authored the absolutely wonderful “Mr. Putter and Tabby” series, which, if you haven’t checked it out already, you really should. Find my review here.