King, Kathleen, and Lowey Bundy Sichol. Cookie Queen: How One Girl Started Tate’s Bake Shop. Illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki. Random House, 2023. 978-0-593-48566-1. Unpaged. $18.99. Grades K-3.

Who doesn’t love to eat a good treat, especially a freshly baked cookie? Young readers will learn a lot about persistence from eleven year old Kathleen Tate’s (founder of Tate’s Bake Shop) determination to bake the perfect cookie. Kathleen’s father makes her a deal where she can keep the money she earns. All she has to do is bake and sell cookies at their farm stand every day that summer. With a desire to create the perfect thin and crispy cookie and motivation to use her earnings to get new clothes for school, Kathleen tweaks the recipe each day with “A little more flour. A lot more salt. A little less sugar.” When the recipe was “Still not right….she tried again.” All along the way Kathleen’s dad Tate supports and encourages her quest for the right recipe. Tasting cookies from every farm stand gives Kathleen the perfect idea, but how will she execute her plan, and will customers like them?

THOUGHTS: Young readers will be hungry for a warm chocolate chip cookie after reading this book. This picture book biography is a great addition for elementary collections, especially those looking for unique biography subjects not commonly featured. Readers will be inspired by Kathleen’s entrepreneurship, which begins at a young age and eventually leads to her successful business.

Picture Book