Tag Archives: rude cakes picture book

rude cakes + rude cake craft!

05.26.2015

Rude Cakes by Rowboat Watkins (out June 2, 2015!).

I’ve got a lot of love for this one. It’s a manners book infused with fun and delightfulness and cakes! (And cyclopses!!)

Come see!

(click image(s) to enlarge)

One brilliant thing about this picture book (there are many!) is the use of the plural. “Rude cakes” goes the text while we see one particular pink rude cake doing all sorts of bad behaviors, from not saying please to never listening to its parents. It calls a cute marshmallow friend, “clumsy crumb” at one point illustrating just how rude a rude cake can be.

I love how the elder cakes have more tiers. How Rude Cake’s companions are a cupcake and a marshmallow. The muted color palette. The cyclops stuffed animal Rude Cake carries that comes into play in a BIG way in the story. And my favorite line?

“They also think baths are dumb and that bedtime is for donut holes.”

Oh but Rude Cake has it coming. A real, live cyclops plucks Rude Cake from its bedroom in order to wear it as a jaunty little hat. (Cyclopses love jaunty little hats.)

And thus, Rude Cake is on the other end of misfortune. Not because cyclopses are rude. Oh no, they are very polite.

But are they polite enough to listen to a jaunty little hat who finally asks nicely to be returned home, using that magic word, “please”? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

Thanks to Chronicle Books for images!

This book calls for a craft, no? You could bake a cake! Or you could make a cute rude cake craft, one that can be worn as a jaunty little hat or kept around on a bookshelf!

Looks like frosting, but it’s actually something that will last a lot longer (and is NOT edible). Spackle!

Here’s how my dude and I made Rude Cake: We used two differently sized plastic plant tray liners taped together to form the cake shape. Then we mixed up some lightweight spackling paste and red food coloring to make a pink frosting-like material. We spread it on with a knife, super simple! After adding more red for a darker pink, we applied that with a pastry bag and decorating tip to the top and rim! Some paper circles for eyes and two more lines of “frosting” for Rude Cake’s mouth and voila!