School Library Journal

Gr 1-4 In this follow-up to How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (Knopf, 1994), a spunky young baker is in the mood for cherry pie. She has the ingredients this time, but she's missing the equipment (bowl, pan, rolling pin, etc.) needed to get the job done. Traveling back and forth across the United States according to instructions that are given recipe style (and can be followed on the endpapers' map), she gathers natural resources from various regions (e.g., cotton from Louisiana to make pot holders) and heads home to manufacture the required objects. Smelting, spinning, weaving, carving, and glass making, the girl works until she has everything ready. The pie is a welcome addition to a July 4th celebration, where floats showcase the places she has visited. Priceman's story is expertly matched to her gouache paintings; loose and sketchy, vivid and childlike, they offer myriad details for each locale. In a school setting, the story is useful for introducing a unit on the United States and for teaching predicting skills. It's also silly enough to circulate just for fun. Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Priceman (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World) fires up the oven for another fanciful baking–cum–geography lesson. Her aspiring young pastry chef, jaunty pinafore and straw hat in place, embarks on a nationwide search for utensils as well as ingredients when she finds the local cook shop closed. First stop, New York, for a taxi ride to “the corner of Pennsylvania and Ohio”; “Then find the closest coal mine” (used to make steel, and thus a pie pan). Ship, plane, train and bus are among the other modes of transport that carry our heroine from sea to shining sea and beyond, to Alaska and Hawaii, landing her home for pie preparation on the Fourth of July. Like a series of playful postcards, the gouache scenes feature recognizable landmarks (Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Rushmore, oil wells), with the girl's loyal Airedale in on the action, too. Fans of the first book will cotton to this second helping, even though it's slightly less spontaneous. And the pie recipe is a welcome extra. Ages 5–8. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Oct.)

ALA Booklist

In 1994 Priceman explained to readers How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. Now the desire for cherry pie takes a girl and her dog across the country. It's the Fourth of July and the stores are closed, so what's a girl to do but hail a taxi and drive to a Pennsylvania mine to get the coal to make the steel to make the pan? And so it goes, as the duo races around the country finding the ingredients for, well, everything, including Hawaiian sand to make glass and New Hampshire granite for the pastry board. The trip is a madcap adventure, but there are many landmarks to observe, and children will get a sense of the breadth and scope of the country. They'll also learn what it really means to make a pie, as the girl does everything from carve the rolling pin to mix the ingredients. The art brims with good cheer and excites with detail, opening the way for lots of discussion.

Kirkus Reviews

The visuals take the cake, or rather the pie, in this folksy jaunt across the country. As a follow-up to the bestselling How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (1994), Priceman sticks with a more local focus. Here, readers take a nonsensical and roundabout journey in search of items to make a cherry pie. Hail a taxi in New York and go to "the corner of Pennsylvania and Ohio" for coal to make a pie pan, then to a cotton farm in Louisiana to make potholders, to New Mexico for clay to make a mixing bowl and so forth. Strangely, the ingredients for the actual pie are not on the shopping list, just the raw materials to make the cooking equipment. Though informational, the journey is filled with so many random distractions young readers may have a hard time sticking with it. The rustic, lush illustrations, however, are as delicious as a cherry pie right from the oven, and for readers who really want to make one, there's a simple recipe included. (Picture book. 5-8)

Horn Book

Priceman's breezy text and freely painted gouache illustrations celebrate America's products and diversity. A girl criss-crosses the U.S. collecting raw materials for a Fourth of July treat. She makes the needed tools ("Melt the sand until it liquefies" for a glass cup) and bakes a pie (recipe included). Readers will enjoy learning about the far-flung sources of ordinary items.