Growing up, my dad used to eat beets and tell my sister and I we should try them because they’d put hair on our chests. My dad had a very hairy chest and we would squeal. When one of my nieces was about 3, he’d tell her beets tasted like candy. My niece would say, “Do you like candy? I don;t like candy.”
Several years ago, at the Hollywood Farmers Market, and I noticed all sorts of people walking about with gorgeous beets. Alas, I didn’t eat beets. I thought I didn’t like them. I decided to be brave and find out what all the buzz was about, so I bought some and, it turns out, beets are earthy and delicious!
As an adult, I have learned to eat a lot of things I didn’t really enjoy as a child. And that is the underlying theme of The Great Lollipop Caper by Dan Krall.
Instead of beets as the nasty food, we have capers. I still don’t really enjoy capers, but I really enjoyed this book.
Sour Mr. Caper is popular with adults, but longs to be loved by kids in the way Mr. Lollipop is. He sneaks into the lollipop factory and pours caper flavor into the vats of lollipop batter. The result is a disaster. Fortunately, Lollipop comes up with a win-win solution.
In first grade, I wrote a tory about a story called “The Pea Family and the Yellow Beans”. Maybe, after reading this, kids could write about other foodstuffs and the difficult problems they have to solve.
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