A Long Line of Cakes
By Deborah Wiles
Hi! This is a great book. My favorite characters were Emma Alabama Lane Cake and Benjamin Lord Baltimore Cake. Emma is tired of moving so much. Emma’s family has moved so many times since she was little, and every time she has moved she has to leave behind a friend. She is 11 years old now, and she has moved to Hallelujah, MS.
She has made a new best friend named Ruby. Ruby is pretty different from Emma. She loves playing baseball with the boys and likes being in charge of things. She likes getting the opinions, not the facts. Emma is someone who lays out all the facts and she is very artistic. Emma has a friend Atlas, where she records all the information of her best friends through the years.
But Emma finds a home in Hallelujah, MS and she never wants to leave it. She feels like it calls to her. So she and Ruby start making a plan to get their parents to stay there. At first, Ruby comes up with absurd ideas like ‘HAVE A BABY’ and ‘DIE’, but then they come up with the idea that Emma could plant a garden. The garden would be so beautiful that her parents wouldn’t want to force Emma to part with the garden. So they start thinking of places where the garden could be.
When Emma moves into town, her dad, Leo, gets a strange feeling like he has been there before. But then when Mr. Pip says that he knew Mr. Leo’s dad, Leo tries to pretend like everything is fake. Mr. Leo goes to a party in Mr. Pip’s barber shop. It is a disaster! All the dogs are running around and they destroy everything and eat all of the food. All of the neighbors get mad at Mr. Leo and he decides it is time to leave.
In the meantime, Emma and Ruby are in an old house of a man who died because they ran there after the party. They started working on the garden in the backyard of the old house. When Emma comes home that day, her dad tells her that they are moving. She tears her friend Atlas to shreds because she was sad.
Will Emma have to leave all of her friends behind again? Will Emma be able to come up with a way to stop her family from moving for good? As I always say, read the book to find out!
A few helpful things I like to say about the books I read:
“Run and Get Mom” (how I describe the scariness factor – zero being not scary at all and five being majorly scary): 2
“Yucky-Lovey Stuff” (how I describe the romance factor – zero having no yucky-lovey parts in it and five having major yucky-lovey parts): 2
I give this book 5 wands.
This is an amazing story about a family that moves so much that they never have time to say goodbye. But here is the question for their next move: ‘Is there a need to say goodbye?’
