Sitting down with a new Morris Gleitzman book in your lap is
like sitting down to a gourmet meal in a swanky restaurant: you know that what
you’re about to imbibe has been lovingly prepared by an expert. Your mouth
starts to water just thinking about it. Pizza
Cake is a gustative reader’s feast.
But be warned. Don’t read this book in a doctor’s
waiting room unless you’re the type to be unperturbed by a roomful of people
watching you a) fall off your chair b) roll around on the floor in
uncontrollable fits of laughter and c) try to slink into the doctor’s surgery
sideways because you’ve wet your pants. Each of the ten stories in this
collection of short pieces is a candidate for producing unexpected mirthful
explosions in the reader.
Pizza Cake
is Gleitzman at his inimitable best. His writing is naïve art in sentences. Master
of representing the workings of the child’s mind through humour and
exaggeration, his books have an instant appeal. Gleitzman’s ability to tap into
the universal experience of the young person creates an accessibility that
allows his characters to immediately become advocates, friends and co-conspirators
with his target audience. And his indefatigable ability to come up with fresh
stories is a godsend to Gleitzman’s fanbase – who will be delighted with Pizza Cake.
The stories in this collection are crafted using the
trademark ingredients of Gleitzman’s recipe for a great reading experience:
prose that is tight and spare; the immediacy of the present tense –from a
combination of first and third person point of view; unflinching commitment to
plot; and gratifying depth through theme and symbolism. In fact, in the last
story in the book – ‘Harriet’s Story’ – Gleitzman weaves in a bit of writing
advice to the young storyteller by outlining the elements of a good story as
part of his narrative. As with all the stories in Pizza Cake, this piece also typifies Gleitzman’s extraordinary
imagination and his ability to keep the reader on the edge of their seat by
crafting a tale out of an ordinary, everyday event that any child would relate
to: in this case when a girl wakes in the night feeling thirsty.
In other stories in the collection we experience the far-reaching
ramifications of mishearing some terminology in the title story, ‘Pizza Cake’;
what the world would be like, in ‘Saving Ms Fosdyke’, if teachers were paid
more than movie stars; sibling rivalry where twins fight over boobs in ‘Big
Mistake’; what happens when there is some uncertainty about a bloodstained neck
in ‘Draclia’; how life can be tricky when your parents christen you with the
name of a very famous person, in ‘Charles the Second’; problems with farting in
‘Tickled Onions’; how a paper clip can save the day in ‘Stationary is Never
Stationary; what happens when your parents complain about everything in ‘Can’t Complain; and when the tables are turned and
the kids are more cluey than their dad in ‘Secret Diary of a Dad’.
The themes in Pizza
Cake are spot-on when it comes to the interests of a child. In all these
stories there is something to uplift and to honour, to validate a child’s own
lived experience and sense of self. With ingenuity and sensitivity, and a fair
whack of parody, Gleitzman weaves through this story collection the themes of
bullying, loss of power, fear of failure, standing up for yourself and the strain
of maintaining one-upmanship.
The freshness, originality and humour in Pizza Cake make it a rewarding and
thoroughly entertaining read. Highly recommended.
Puffin 2011
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