Great Golden Pancake Awards

When the girls were little, friends and I used to take it in turns to hostess a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Party for our children, featuring pancake related activities. You know the sort of thing – toss the pancake, draw a pancake, three-legged race with a pancake, dress up as a pancake, eat a pancake or ten, and as you might expect of me by now, once the kids and I were exhausted with all that pancake tossing, I liked to sit the hordes down and read them a story.

Now the girls have reached the age where, thanks to excellent and far-sighted parenting, we get to the sitting down bit much sooner. Last night they made the pancakes while I lorded it at the dinner table actually chit-chatting with my husband.

Over (just a few) pancakes we recalled past parties and the best read aloud stories. And so we give you -

• Winner of the Golden Pancake Award for Best Story featuring pancakes:

The Elephant and the Bad Baby

Reginald Briggs and Elfrida Vipont.

The beautifully illustrated story of a kleptomaniac elephant and a baby who never says ‘please’. They rampage through the town collecting a conga line of irate shop-keepers, returning home in time for tea and pancakes.

The repeated refrain of ‘….and they went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, all down the road.’ is etched in our family memory and comes in handy surprisingly often.

• Winner of Best Story with a fun and memorable refrain:

Tikki Tikki Tembo

Arlene Mosel & Blair Lent

“A long time ago in China, first-born sons had very long names. One day Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo fell down the well…..”

This is a fabulous book. If you don’t know it already and have children under 7 – rush out and find a copy. Great fun to read aloud and you’ll soon have that name off by heart!

You can read a short version of Tikki Tikki Tembo with a slightly different refrain at this a treasure-trove of a site for all story tellers and their listeners where retired Pittsburg professor. D.L. Ashliman generously shares a lifetime’s collection of stories from all over the world. There are different versions of favourites loved by Europeans, Americans and Disney, as well as a host of stories dear to cultures other than our own.