Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast by Josh Funk and Brendan Kearney

In Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast, the title characters live "Deep in the fridge and behind the green peas, way past the tofu and left of the cheese." They're good friends. But, when Miss Brie brings the news that there's only a single drop of syrup remaining in the bottle, they both announce their desire for the last drop. And, the race is on.

Through Broccoli Forest, past Orange Juice Fountain,
they climbed to the top of Potato Mash Mountain.

Pushing and shoving they fought for the lead,
Toast behind Pancake, who rolled at high speed.

As they race through the fridge, each has plenty of mishaps. Sir French Toast falls in an open pot of jam and takes an unfortunately ill-conceived ski leap off of Sauerkraut Peak, landing him below his destination. Lady Pancake gets stuck in Chili Lagoon and causes an avalanche of beans, even after being warned to change directions by a chickpea. 

But, finally they arrive, "battered and soggy, exhausted and crumbling," beside the bottle of syrup. And, it's empty. While they were racing each other, Baron von Waffle managed to sneak over to the bottle, first. He enjoyed that last drop. 

With one evil laugh, Waffle slipped out of sight. 
The syrup was gone. No more reason to fight.

Trudging back home beneath layers of grime,
Toast said, "Perhaps we should not fight next time."

Always a welcome lesson, that joining forces is better than fighting, Pancake and Toast begin their pact by immediately agreeing to share a pat of butter. 

Highly recommended - Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast is another one of my new favorites. I've fortunately gotten to read a lot of great children's books lately. The illustrations are pure delight. I've read the book several times and I find myself smiling all the way through. I particularly love the creative way food is used to make forests and mountains, a fountain, a lagoon . . . even a parachute fashioned from a lettuce leaf. At the end of the book, there's a fold-down page that shows the entire refrigerator interior, so you can see how when Sir French Toast fell way too far after vaulting off Sauerkraut Peak he landed in the vegetable crisper. Ridiculously fun.

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