Terms of Use Stories with Read-em Games with Eat-em Recipes with Bake-em Crafts with Make-em Buy Aunt Matilda at the Market take me back PieCrazyKids
At an elegant party, a little boy's dreamy imagination takes flight--and so do the custard pies. A little boy is a bored and sleepy guest at his Aunt Matilda's charity ball, until...a tiny dog darts across the dance floor, a gentleman's toupee loses its grip, and a lemon custard pie sails through the crowd. Before long, pies are flying through the air at this elegant affair. Jane Morris Udovic's engaging story in rhyme and David Udovic's vibrant, comic paintings show how a young boy's dreamy imagination turns a stuffy party into a boisterously good time.-- Front Street

Reviews

Booklist Review
Set in a grand ballroom, Jane Morris Udovic’s picture-book debut is narrated by a boy who’s been forced to attend the fancy charity gala his aunt is throwing. In orderly rhymes, he tells the story of a party gone awry. All starts out well, if not excitingly—the guests are elegantly dressed, the punch bowl is flowing, and the boy calls his Aunt Matilda an “oh-so-perfect” hostess. But he seems to be on the verge of falling asleep, his eyes sweetly heavy-lidded. Then both the party and the story go wild: a little dog is on the loose, a toupee is liberated from a man’s head, and custard pies start flying. Illustrator Udovic choreographs the slapstick comedics with plenty of verve; the dancers don’t mind getting hit by pies, and some partiers even swing from the chandeliers. Just as the author and illustrator keep the boy near all the action, so Aunt Matilda is watching out for him. When he wakes up, there’s a giant custard pie at the ready. —Abby Nolan

Kirkus review
In a first-person, rhyming narration, an unnamed little boy recounts being forced to attend a party by his Aunt Matilda of the "oh-so-perfect manners" and the "oh-so-perfect friends." Bored and exhausted, the boy falls asleep in an armchair and begins to dream. In his dreams, the boring party morphs into a boisterous free-for-all, in which the guests all wind up throwing pies at each other. In dreamland, the boy has a change of heart about his Aunt and invites her to participate in his birthday baseball game. In muted colors and much detail, the illustrations depict both the real party and the dream party with the same combination of realism and whimsy. The illustrations also do the job of clearly indicating with a palette modulation that the boy is asleep and remains dreaming through the rest of the tale. A pleasing-enough romp but with an ending somehow unsatisfying, probably because readers know that the boy's fond memories and new appreciation for Aunt Matilda will vanish—rather undeservedly, as the last scene depicts her lovingly covering him with a blanket—when he wakes up. (Picture book. 4-8)

Front Street

"Illustrator Udovic choreographs the slapstick comedics with plenty of verve; the dancers don’t mind getting hit by pies, and some partiers even swing from the chandeliers."
— School Library Journal

by Jane Morris Udovic
illustrated by David Udovic
32 page picture book
children 3 and up
Published by Front Street