Mr Wolfs Pancakes - Jan Fearnley

Mr Wolf's Pancakes by Jan Fearnley Another successful trip to the library and this time I struggled home with 15 different books! Luckily for me a few of these books were paperback instead of the usual hard or board back books that you often get with small children's fiction. One of the paperback books was in fact this book called Mr Wolf's Pancakes. I initially picked up this book because of the wonderfully bright illustrated front cover, which depicts a cartoon drawing of a wolf holding fresh steaming hot pancakes. The Book is relatively new and looking inside the first few pages I can see that the book was first published in ...  Read the complete review

This book is written by Jan Fearnley and tells the story of a wolf who is hungry and fancies some pancakes. He decides to have a go at cooking them but doesn't know where to start so asks the hen that lives up the road. She is very rude and tell him to go away. He then realizes that he should read a cook book to get the ingrediants and method together but can't read very well so asks another member of village to help. It seems that everyone in the village is in a grumpy mood and doesn't want to give Mr Wolf the time of day to help him make some pancakes but thankfully he under estimates his own abilities and soon the smell of freshly baked pancakes is wafting through the ...  Read the complete review

Mr Wolf wants to make some pancakes, but his rude and uncooperative neighbours won't give him any help. Chicken Licken, Wee Willie Winkie, the Ginerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs all give him the brush-off, so in the end he has to make them himself. When it comes to eating them though it's a different story, and everyone wants some. Mr Wolf lives up to his reputation and eats them instead, saving just enough room for his pancakes as well. This book takes advantage of stories that every child knows. The author uses well-known nursery rhymes and fairy tales and twists them to come up with a brand new tale that should amuse both adults ...  Read the complete review

And now for something a little different! Mr Wolf's Pancakes tells the tale of a wolf that wants to make pancakes. He goes around asking all the different animals to help him but they all refuse. When he eventually makes them himself, the animals come running to ask to eat pancakes. The wolf lets them in then....eats all the animals: NICE! This is an odd book. It has some moral message about doing unto others as you would want them to do to you I suppose, but it's hard to explain the shock ending to a 2 year old, and that's quite a weird position to be put into. The illustrations are bright and colourful, created through watercolours and ink. They ...  Read the complete review

As with many parents, there are some books that I love reading to my kids, and some which I absolutely dread them requesting. 'Mr Wolf's Pancakes' definitely falls into the first category! Even though I have read it tens of times to my younger daughter, I still enjoy it as much as the first time. Jan Fearnley has taken the character of the wolf, so often the bad guy in children's stories, and made him the object of sympathy, with such success that whereas the ending might normall fill us with horror, we end up feeling that Mr Wolf's actions were entirely justifiable! He spends the whole book trying to get his pancakes made and appealing for help from his neighbours, ...  Read the complete review