David Melling, Hugless Douglas and the Great Cake Bake (Hugless Douglas #7), Hodder Children’s Book/Hachette, 12 April 2016, 32pp., $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781444919882
The Great British Bake-Off has another thing to answer for. Hugless Douglas is back in this humorous seventh adventure featuring Flossie and her flock of sheep. A trail of sticky, honey-flavoured footprints across his bed when he wakes up leads Hugless Douglas to the awful discovery that the honey is missing from his food cupboard. He follows the trail to a flock of sticky sheep collecting berries, nuts and carrots for a baking session.
Roped into helping, Douglas and the suitably garbed sheep, in aprons and chefs’ hats, mix and stir the ingredients and finally bake cupcakes in an outdoor stone oven. While they are waiting for them to be ready, a food fight ensues and in the bun (!) rush to the finished product, the sheep eat every single cake. They don’t even keep one for Douglas. But necessity is the mother of invention and Douglas discovers that eating carrots, nuts and berries without honey doesn’t taste too bad after all.
While the storyline is not perhaps as tight as earlier titles in the series, the hilarious illustrations of the sheep covered in honey with grass and other bits sticking to them will entrance little readers and the instructions for decorating cupcakes with sheep faces may lead to baking sessions with accommodating adults.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage