Petit fours: dainty little iced cakes, delicately layered with fruit or buttercream, an adorable bite-size treat. Eating one of these pastel pretties can make you feel quite special, maybe even a little giddy with delight.

That was just how I felt reading The Adventures of Miss Petitfour by award winning author and poet Anne Michaels.  Meeting the inimitable, eccentric Miss Petitfour was a singular pleasure since she’s an expert at baking and eating little cakes.  A very good talent to have, I must say.

Miss P also likes to read, chat, and dance. She thrives on small pleasures. Fond of “pockets, paisley, playful patterns and anything hand-knitted,” she travels by tablecloth with her 16 cats trailing aloft, a fanciful kind of Mary Poppins sans umbrella with her own brand of magic.

Laced with just the right amounts of whimsy and fun, this charming book features five everyday adventures of precisely the right size:

Some adventures are so small, you hardly know they’ve happened. Like the adventure of sharpening your pencil to a perfect point, just before it breaks and that little bit gets stuck in the sharpener. That, I think we will all agree, is a very small adventure.

Other adventures are so big and last so long, you might forget they are adventures at all — like growing up.

And some adventures are just the right size — fitting into a single, magical day. And these are the sort of adventures Miss Petitfour had.

And guess what else?

Miss Petitfour believed firmly that every adventure past her doorstep — even just a jaunt to the grocery shop — must end with a tea party . . .

Huzzah! 🙂

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