Review by Booklist Review
This could be the book that kicks off a love of cooking in kids or at least opens them up to trying new cuisine. Lorenzo, a pudgy lobster with a baseball cap, loves new foods and places. On one of his scuttles down the beach, he discovers a seagull eating something triangle-shaped called pizza. It's love at first bite for the lobster, and he hurries to his kitchen beneath the sea to try re-creating this dish. Lorenzo and his friend, Kalena the sea turtle, embark on several hilarious (and disgusting!) attempts at making a pizza, using ingredients like jellyfish jelly, algae, squid ink, and sand dollars. Finally, Kalena finds a pizza stand on the beach and takes back a whole pizza to Lorenzo. The aspiring chefs study it carefully, re-create it, and throw a triumphant pizza party for friends. Bright, comically detailed illustrations underscore this story of teamwork and persistence. Adam Rubin's Dragons Love Tacos (2012) would make a great follow-up to this lively book.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-An adventurous lobster named Lorenzo finds a seagull eating something delicious from a paper plate on the beach. Unlike any other seagull in the real world, this bird invites Lorenzo to share his pizza. And Lorenzo loves it! He rushes to tell his friends about his wonderful food discovery. He and his friend Kalena the turtle want to try to make their own pizza, but they have no idea how to do it. They use ingredients that Lobster has around the kitchen, like seaweed cake, kelp paste, eelgrass, and sand dollars. After the pizza is baked, it is just not right. They keep trying other marine ingredients, but the results are disappointing. On her way home, Kalena smells a delicious real pizza being cooked at a food stand on the beach and buys one to bring back to Lorenzo. They study the real pizza carefully so they can create one successfully and have a big pizza party for their friends. Colorful cartoon illustrations brighten the text, adding humorous details to the words. The illustrations do take some liberties for graphic appeal: lobsters are only red after they have been cooked! The silly, yucky ingredients Lorenzo and Kalena use to make their first pizza will delight readers. The making of the first pizza is really the heart of the story, and everything else just supports that idea. VERDICT Readers will enjoy this silly pizza story and will perhaps want to design their own creations for other animals (a pizza for a rabbit or an elephant, etc.). A tasty addition.-Mary Hazelton, formerly at Warren & Waldoboro Elementary Schools, ME c Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Will involving kids in the cooking process help them try new foods? Lordon uses pizza-making to entice in this venture into new tastes. After falling in love with a single slice of pizza, a lobster named Lorenzo tries his hand at re-creating the tasty treat. Unfortunately, Lorenzo cannot remember what was on the pizza, leading to repeated failures trying to recapture the treasured slice for his turtle friend Kalena. The absurd litany of unpalatable toppings includes sponge patties, jellyfish jelly, squid ink, and algae. Unsurprisingly, none of the combinations they try taste any good at all. The illustrations balance characters and scenery with speech bubbles, and they are engaging enough, although the main characters are a bit static, with cut-and-paste eyes and simple body shapes. When Kalena finds a real pizza pie, the duo surprisingly goes straight from zero to hero. "Let's make a pizza with the correct ingredients. It's so tasty I want more!" exclaims Lorenzo. The very next page depicts a backyard full of pizza-eating friends. Readers are never shown the process that results in the first successful pie, which leaves the author's intent unclear: to promote pizza production? That seafood is bad? Instead, the message that pizza tastes better when shared with a friend is what remains. Look for stronger food and friendship books than this one. (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
