Lester L. Laminack

Saturdays and Teacakes Lester L. Laminack

When I was nine or ten years old I couldn't wait for Saturdays. I got up early, dressed, and rolled my bicycle out of the garage.
So begins author Lester Laminack's poetic memory of the adult who made him feel incredibly special-his grandmother. Every Saturday, the narrator, a young boy, rides his bicycle up and down country roads past farms, a graveyard, and a filling station, until he reaches his beloved Mammaw's house. She is waiting for him. While she picks tomatoes, he pushes the lawnmower through the dew-wet grass. Afterwards, he always helps her make teacakes from scratch, breaking the eggs and stirring the batter. But the best part, he remembers, is eating the hot, sweet cakes fresh from the oven.
Children will understand the special relationship of the narrator and his grandmother. Set in a small town in the Leave It to Beaver days of the mid-sixties, the story evokes a gentler and more innocent time and place. Young readers will almost hear the sounds of bicycle wheels on gravel and the criiick-craaack-criiick of a metal glider in Laminack's richly detailed prose. Award-winning illustrator Chris Soentpiet's images beautifully capture the relationship and the place, perfectly depicting the simplicity of an earlier time.