# 27 The Cabbage Soup Solution (Polish)

The Cabbage Soup Solution #27

Author and Illustrator: Erika Oller

Dutton Children’s Books

2004

30 pages

Multicultural (Polish)

            This Polish book is about a woman that has a garden but cabbage is the best vegetable she grows. Every morning she would pick the largest cabbages to sale to the greengrocer. But one morning, half of the cabbages were gone. She decided to stay up that night to see who was taking her cabbage but she fell asleep. When she woke up she was cold and her cabbages were missing. She was so upset but she tried to sleep it off. While she was asleep the cats took charge of the garden and got the bunnies to help get everything needed for the soup. When she woke up the next day she was going out to the garden to get everything needed to make the soup and found it all at the front door. She made an extra amount of soup for later. When she started to eat she noticed the bunnies were watching from outside so she invited them into the house. They all ate and slept. The next day they helped her plant more cabbages. These were the best cabbages she ever had. She sold some to the greengrocer, kept some for herself, and gave some to the rabbits. She gained more friends, more business, and more cabbage soup.

            It looks like Oller used watercolor and color pencils as the medium. Oller used informal text placement to tell the story. The horizontal line in the book compliments the farm landscape pictures in the book. Calm colors are used in the book and the pictures are balanced.

            This book is appropriate for kindergarten students and up. I recommend using this book to teach about the Polish culture in social studies. This book would also be ideal to use when you are teaching character education. You could teach your students about not taking from others and helping others. You could also teach a math lesson from this book by finding a cabbage soup recipe. This book has received the Bccb Blue Ribbon Picture Book Award.