about the book
Gladys Gatsby’s parents are terrible cooks. Mom, a harried professional, only buys fat free, sugarless ingredients, and Dad, an IRS auditor, couldn’t follow a recipe if his life depended on it. They barely manage the microwave! Every night they bring home fast food and Gladys hates it.
A quiet, shy twelve-year-old, Gladys loves cooking. While visiting from Paris, her Aunt Lydia encourages her passions for good food. Mr. Eng, the owner of the gourmet food shop, schools Gladys on the best ingredients. The neighbor next door shares her spectacular cookbook collection. Gladys watches all the cooking channel shows and, after school and during holiday breaks, secretly experiments on gourmet recipes. It doesn’t matter that her parents have no cooking tools. She can make a perfect flaky pie crust using an umbrella handle! Unfortunately using her dad’s blow torch to melt the sugar topping on her crème brûlée is a terrible mistake. The curtains catch fire, and Gladys is banished from the kitchen—she is even banned from talking about food!
Ms. Quincy, Gladys’s teacher, assigns each student to write an essay on “My Future” for a newspaper’s contest. Instead of addressing her envelope to the newspaper competition, Gladys sends a dream letter about being a restaurant reviewer to the food editor, who just happens to be desperate for a new freelance food critic. Unaware that Gladys is a sixth grader, the editor emails her a job offer and assigns her to review New York City’s Fancy Cakes Dessert Restaurant!
Somehow Gladys has to make it into the city and to the restaurant on her own without her parents finding out AND meet a quickly approaching deadline! With the help of the snobbish school Queen Bee and a purple limo, Gladys just might get her shot at becoming a real foodie critic…that is, if all her plans don’t go hilariously and disastrously awry!
about the author
Tara Dairman grew up a really shy kid in New York State. Her parents thought she was nuts when she got interested in cooking. Why would you want to do this boring household task when you could just get takeout? They came around when she started cooking for them! And Tara—well, she’s not so shy anymore!
Tara studied creative writing at Dartmouth College. For several years, she worked as a magazine editor, managing freelance writers. They communicated through emails, and most she never met face to face. One day she realized that she could be tricked into publishing an article written by a kid if the writing was good enough. Suddenly Tara had the premise for her very first novel!
Writing the book turned into a real challenge. Newly married, she and her new hubby were embarking on an extended honeymoon—two years and 74 countries! So All Four Stars was written in a mall in Brazil, a guesthouse in Morocco, and in several coffeehouses in Argentina, Cameroon, Gabon, and Tanzania! The final editing was done in the less exotic basement of her parent’s house. The once shy Tara is now quite adventurous. Check her website for more about her exploits!
Besides writing very funny books for younger readers, Tara is also a playwright whose work has been produced professionally in New York and Dublin, Ireland. Currently, she and her husband have settled down in a home in Colorado. It includes a trusty waffle iron and all the tools needed to make Gladys’s tasty recipes, including her amazing Osmathus-flavored crème brûlées.
Sources:
Author website
Author interview: Fearless Fifteeners
Also by Tara Dairman:
Stars So Sweet (All Four Stars). Putnam Publishing (Juvenile). July 2016.
The Stars of Summer (All Four Stars). Putnam Publishing (Juvenile). 2015.
read more!
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The Stars of Summer (All Four Stars) by Tara Dairman
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