Horn Book Review
When Baba Edis decides to make soup, her well-meaning friends add salt, pepper, and garlic until the whole pot becomes inedible. Quickly realizing the error of their ways, the four Babas assign tasks and efficiently concoct a new batch of soup that pleases all of their palates. Delightfully colorful and cozy illustrations bring the busy, bumbling Babas to life. From HORN BOOK 1994, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Too many visiting babas, adding too much spice to Baba Edis' soup, are the too-many-cooks that spoil her broth--which is rather fun, in a simple-minded way, assuming a child knows the old saying. (It's especially fun to see, in the three wordless spreads, their pictured reactions.) Then, on Baba Yetta's wish that ""there was a way to start again,"" they begin all over--with each one doing her bit and only Baba Edis adding ""the salt and pepper and garlic"" to the soup. Finally, to little purpose except to round things out, each one takes a hand in cleaning up. It's more an exercise in folktale structure, in fact, than a story with a life of its own--but, on the positive side, even the page-by-page depiction of washing, drying, and putting away the dishes is geared to a child's everyday experience and a short attention span. Though not so designated, it could serve as an Early I Can Read for a slightly advanced early reader. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 4-8. First published in 1979, Croll's funny, popular too-many-cooks story in the I Can Read series is newly illustrated here, with the babas (grandmothers) in a Russian winter setting. The simple, bright pictures in folk-art style show the bustling peasant women in the kitchen, each one tasting and adding and making a bigger mess of the soup. (Reviewed Feb. 1, 1994)0060213833Hazel Rochman
