A gay new version of this old favorite. "The old woman picked up the Journey Cake and went inside to freshen it up on the griddle. She went, singing the song she liked best:

     'Warm up the Journey Cake;

     From now on it's Johnny Cake.

     Johnny, come eat it

     With milk for your tea!' "

Ruth Sawyer's famous skill as a storyteller is matched by the artist's two-toned pictures in blue-gray, red-brown, and white. There are wonderfully active drawings of the chase after the Journey Cake: duck, pig, donkey, cow, hens, sheep, and Johnny, the bound-out boy, all hurtling up the hill together.

With its repetitions and rhythms, it's a perfect story for reading aloud. And it lends itself especially well to dramatization—groups of young children can choose their parts and have a lot of fun acting it out together. Timeless and placeless, it will be claimed by people everywhere as their own.

From the dust jacket