| Can Mimi undo the mayhem caused by her baking in this contemporary-fantasy retelling of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream?Eleven-year-old Mimi Mackson comes from a big Indian American family: Dads a renowned food writer, Moms a successful businesswoman, and her three older siblings all have their own respective accomplishments. Its easy to feel invisible in such an impressive family, but Mimis dream of proving shes not the least-talented member of her family seems possible when she discovers a baking contest at the new bakery in town. Plus, itll start her on the path to becoming a celebrity chef like her culinary idol, Puffy Fay. But when Mimis dad returns from a business trip, hes mysteriously lost his highly honed sense of taste. Without his help, Mimi will never be able to bake something impressive enough to propel her to gastronomic fame. Drawn into the woods behind her house by a strangely familiar song, Mimi meets Vik, a boy who brings her to parts of the forest shes never seen. Who knew there were banyan trees and wild boars in Massachusetts? Together they discover exotic ingredients and bake them into delectable and enchanting treats. But as her dad acts stranger every day, and her siblings romantic entanglements cause trouble in their town, Mimi begins to wonder whether the ingredients she and Vik found are somehow the cause of it all. She needs to use her skills, deductive and epicurean, to uncover whats happened. In the process, she learns that in life as in baking, not everything is sweet. . . . |
