Book: The Ickabog
Author: J.K. Rowling
Genre: Fairytale/Fantasy
Page 18
Prompt book chosen by my daughter Miller.
“Mrs. Beamish, the pastry chef, belonged to the second group.”
Now, young readers, what do we know about pastry chefs who bake for kings and queens and in-betweens? We know that they have extraordinary nostrils for smelling the colour golden. We know that they have extraordinary fingers to feel the life of dough. We know that they have extraordinary spines to twist and turn and knead and reach and lift and place. We know that they have extraordinary ribs that are built like a hearth to house their heart that beats and stirs and whips and scrapes and plumps and puffs.
We know that pastry chefs who bake for kings and queens and in-betweens are the keepers of their joy, for it is irrevocably a fact (F-A-C-T) that baked goods are the language of the soul and the stomach. That makes pastry chefs fluent in Soul and Stomach – dialects of love that are very, very, very, (extremely!) very important to kings and queens and in-betweens.
Mrs. Beamish was Head Pastry Chef for King Ronnie Rumplesfeld, his wife, Queen Hetty Hip (she kept her maiden name on account of she’s a #feminist), and the middle-sized town of Yoots (established by a small group of youths with minor speech impediments), aka the in-betweens. What was the role of Head Chef, you wonder? Indeed, it was in the Head of Mrs. Beamish, a Birch-tree of a woman with a torso like a thirsty trunk and arms like curious branches, that resided all the recipes that guaranteed the King, the Queen and in-betweens their Soul and Stomach joy. Without her Head, there would be no baked anything – goods or bads. (And, trust me, fine readers, you don’t want to come mouth to mouth with a Baked Bad.)
VANESSA SHIELDS, writer 