Found: Cakes and Geese

Last night Harrison and I had our Mommy and Me Book Club Meeting.  This month I had him read The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale and he had me read Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix.  Because the book Found involves following clues and searching for answers, I thought it would be fun if Harrison and I went on a scavenger hunt.

The city of St. Louis turns 250 years old this year and to commemorate this birthday, 250 birthday cake sculptures have been placed throughout the city.  There were a high concentration of birthday cakes to be found in Forest Park, so we drove around the park taking pictures and talking about our books.

Here's the Art Museum cake by the statue of St. Louis.  This cake doubles as a crummy commercial for Southwest Airlines.

We also found these nine cakes at (Starting top row left): The Jewel Box, the World's Fair Pavilion, Steinberg Ice Skating Rink, St. Louis Zoo, Ted Drewes, Missouri History Museum, Forest Park Visitors Center, Grand Basin, and the Muny.  

We also found a goose!  I wanted to get a picture of me with the goose (You know, like I'M the goose girl?), but no go.  That goose was mean!  Also, I cut off the "S" in Shannon Hale's name.  Oops.

My super secret reason for wanting to do this book club with Harrison was so that he would read The Goose Girl.  No lie.  I knew he would never read it on his own.  (Duh.  It's called The Goose Girl and has the most feminine book cover, ever, with a blurb from the author of Twilight.  Come on!)  He absolutely loved it!  He said it was nothing like what he thought it would be and he would definitely read the rest of the books in the Books of Bayern series.  Winning!

Harrison is a big fan of Margaret Peterson Haddix.  He's read nearly everything she's ever written and he's told me about all of them.  May I just say that the woman is a little bit . . . off?  Read the description of any of her books and you're bound to be mildly disturbed that this woman writes children's books.  In the prologue of Found, a mysterious plane lands at the airport and it is discovered that inside are 36 passengers: all babies.  What the WHAT?!  The rest of the book takes place 13 years later and finding out who the babies actually were and where they came from was a pretty cool reveal.  I like Haddix's style, but am still a little bit afraid of her.

Neither book left us with much to discuss (mostly because it had been years since I'd read The Goose Girl and I couldn't remember much about it), but we had SO MUCH FUN running around in the rain and taking pictures.  Also, Harrison had to go to the bathroom really bad and nothing was open, so he made his mark somewhere in Forest Park.  Memories . . .

Plus, any night that ends here is a success.  It's no Goodberry's, but it will do.