Cinnamon Crumb, Baking Detective: The Great Cake Caper – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Friendship, baking, humour, sabotage, detectives.
Children’s book title: Cinnamon Crumb, Baking Detective: The Great Cake Caper.
Children’s author: Harry Woodgate.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Usborne.
ISBN: 9781805075660.
Recommended for children aged: 8-11.
First published: Paperback September 2026.
This children’s book is ideal for: encouraging an interest in exciting, fast-moving, chapter-based fiction in the suggested age range.
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Our review:
Cinnamon Crumb, of the famous Crumb and Sons bakery in her home town of Marzipan, has a problem. Well, she has a few, but not being able to bake anything successfully is pretty big with her family’s history! So she is surprised to be asked by neighbour Victoria Sponge to spy on another neighbour, Madeleine Macaron, at the beginning of the town’s Great Cake Carnival. Her task is to try and discover why Victoria’s rival has won the previous three Twelve-Tiered Crowns awarded for the best cake at the Carnival. Becoming Madeleine’s apprentice seems a great way to spy on her and Cinnamon might even improve her nonexistent culinary skills at the same time!
Working with friends Rafi and Amber, Cinnamon realises someone is intent on sabotaging everyone’s competition entries. As they discover other bakeries that have been vandalised and reveal long-hidden secrets, they identify more potential suspects and, as they begin trying to figure out who is responsible, the Crumb Investigations Agency is born.
Our verdict:
Cinnamon Crumb, Baking Detective: The Great Cake Caper is a fun, fast-moving adventure story, which is the first in a new series introducing Cinnamon Crumb and her two friends, Rafi, whose mum cooks great vegan food which she’s selling at the Carnival, and Amber, who is a sugarsmith student and has Tourette syndrome. Written from Cinnamon’s POV, it is an empathetic reading experience.
The last in the line, so far, of the Crumb baking dynasty, Cinnamon is an endearing, likeable main protagonist whose story is told in the first person. She wants to be a competent cook but is about to find out she’s very good at investigating! As the story progresses, she discovers more about the history of her family and herself. Her ability to accept that she has done something wrong is well described, as are her apologies.
The storyline is well written, and the endless supply of bakery puns, chapter titles and references adds an extra layer of humour to the experience, which, I was pleased to realise, doesn’t intrude at all. The illustrations, by the author, are wonderful and the whole experience, storyline, characters, illustrations, and denouement work together to provide an experience which should appeal to even the most reluctant of readers.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- Many books, both for adults and children, use familiar sayings and words slightly changed for titles and humour. The culinary background of this book means the author can use lots of puns and names based on cooking and its vocabulary.
- How much fun do you think the author had with the chapter, character and place names?
- Does the inclusion of a map at the front of this book help readers understand Cinnamon’s travels around the town of Marzipan?
- In a cross-curricular activity with art, design a poster advertising the Great Cake Carnival, the Sugarsmiths’ Honeycomb Hive or the Twelve-Tiered Crown celebrations.
- Amber has Tourette syndrome, which she tells Cinnamon and Rafi all about. Do you think having syndromes such as this in children’s fiction makes you more understanding about these types of illnesses and the problems they can cause?
- What information do you need for a successful cake recipe?
- If you had to design a special cake, what would it look like?
Many thanks to Usborne for the review copy.
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