eating all that chicken made her feel so frisky that she started dancing all over again...

James Sage's Sassy Gracie made me laugh out loud for some reason. Maybe it was Gracie's character--when this guy says sassy, he means sassy. I'm talking red high heels that go "clunkety-clunk", gold hoop earrings, you know. At first I was feeling kind of bad for Gracie because she has a "master" (I think she's some kind of servant, the cook's helper?) but it quickly became clear that she could handle her own. On the cook's day off, the master of the household is having guests over and needs Gracie to cook something. She cooks two beautiful chickens (with breaks for dancing during the process) but somehow ends up eating both of them...at which point she must figure out how to keep master and his guests from finding out. And I must admit, she does come up with a very simple, but sassy solution. Something about this book came off a little offensively. I'm really not sure why because I still had a pretty positive reaction towards it. Pierre Pratt's illustrations are neat too. They look like canvas paintings. One thing I could have done without though was the repitition of sound words. But I'm guessing Mr. Sage threw that in there to make the book somewhat patterned and predictable so younger readers would have something to anticipate to keep them interested seeing as how the story's a little long. And maybe to add a little to Gracie's character, perhaps children are more able to understand her character when they hear the sound of her high heels...who knows? Anyway, I wish I had some of Gracie's sass to get me out of potentially uncomfortable situtations.