Seven Loaves of Bread

Any mother of small children has certain books memorized because of repeat readings. Sometimes it makes one want to pull their hair out, and other times a mother is delightfully happy to read that book for the fifth time today, because, well, she likes it too. Seven Loaves of Bread by Ferida Wolf is one of those books.

Milly and Rose are sisters who live on a farm. Milly does all the baking, and Rose often wonders why she makes seven loaves of bread everyday. It seems like so much work. Milly answers, "Seven is as easy as one," and continues her work. Each loaf of bread is designated to a person or animal on the farm. When Milly gets sick Rose takes over the baking and decides seven loaves are too many and starts cutting corners. Unsurprisingly, Rose quickly learns that cutting corners only creates more work. By the end of the story Rose, "who only worked as hard as she had to," learned that seven is indeed as easy as one! The scratch board style illustrations are charming and go so well with the story.

"Seven is as easy as one." has become a catch phrase on our house. Our only copy is from the library and we have renewed it three times already! My four and six-year-olds especially love this story, I think partly because of the repetition and cadence of the tale. It certainly is worth reading at least once!