Ice Cream Soup by Frank Modell

This book is about two boys named Marvin and Milton that were told by their parents that they would not be having a birthday party this year. The two boys decided to throw a birthday party by themselves. They made paper hats, blew up balloons, and wrote out invitations. The day of the party the boys tried to make a cake and ice cream. They made a caved-in, burnt cake so they went to the bakery and tried to get help but none was given. The ice cream they made looked soupy so they went to the ice cream shop to get help but none was given there either. The boys were upset but when the guests finally arrived, the baker and ice cream maker showed up with cake and ice cream.

I thought this book was going to be very different because of its title. I thought the entire book was going to be about ice cream soup, but it wasn't. It was about a birthday party with only one little mention of ice cream soup. I don't feel like a lot of thought went into the title. Also, I felt some of the story was incomplete or didn't make sense. When the two boys go to the bakery to get help, the owner says that they should have gotten a cake from him. The picture shows the man walking into the bakery so I assumed that the man was leading the boys into the bakery to help them. On the next page, the boys are back in their kitchen making ice cream. I felt like I missed part of the story.

Frank Modell is also the illustrator of this book. The pictures are pretty straight-forward with not a lot of detail. They remind me of pictures that I would read in a comic strip in the newspaper, which makes sense because Modell regularly publishes cartoons in The New Yorker.

This is an easy book for beginner readers. The text is big and there aren't very difficult words. It is good for all ages.