All Four Stars

All Four Stars was written by Tara Dairman and revolves around the life and love for cooking found within an adorable sixth grader named Gladys. 

This book was unexpectedly spectacular.  I had no idea how much I was going to love this book.  The writing was brilliant and entertaining.  I read that it took Tara many years to actually get this published, with it almost not happening, and I am so happy that she took the leap into being a published author because the world would have been missing too much cuteness in Gladys, and a wonderful light-hearted story with All Four Stars. 

Gladys lives with parents who walk a line of constant crap food and microwaveable “healthy alternatives”.  They are not big on utilizing anything past the microwave by way of cooking.  It isn’t until a visit from her aunt at the age of eight that Gladys even realizes that there is a whole world of food that she has been missing out on.  Thus begins her double life of secret cooking. 

I felt pain at thinking how many households may live off of fast food and cheap restaurants instead of exploring their palette.  As a mother I cringed to think of the lack of anything actually good going into Gladys’ diet at the hands of her parents.  I rejoiced in Gladys’ rebellion against constant manufactured food in her quest to reproduce recipes from scratch.

Overall I give this book 5/5 stars.  This was an easy love in a book for me.  I do not often read books such as middle grade, but this book was so much more than a specific age book.  As someone who also loves to cook, it would be awesome to see some of Gladys’ recipes into a possible future recipe book.  Gladys could inspire anyone to find their own “flavor” and if you already have a love of food or cooking, than I am sure you can easily relate to this book.  This book is great for pretty much anyone.  I am happy to see that The Stars of Summer will be coming out this summer as the sequel to this delightful read!

*I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest review.