Let’s Cook and Eat! by "Guri to Gura"

I baked a fruit-filled pound cake on this three-day weekend, because I reread Guri to Gura (Guri and Gura), made me want to cook and eat a cake.
     Guri and Gura are children’s books about two field mice. My favorite story when I was a child was the first one, Guri and Gura: The Giant Egg. The story is that the twin brothers Guri and Gura find a gigantic egg in the woods, and use it to bake a castella, a Japanese sponge cake. They bake the castella on the spot, because the egg is bigger than themselves and they can't take it home. All the animals in the woods gather around to share the delicious-smelling cake. Guri and Gura treat the animals to the giant cake, and they eat up.
     Guri and Gura sing the song, “What do you think we like to do best? Cook and eat. Eat and cook.” Me too. I could almost smell the castella baking and imagine the sweet taste of it. The impression is in the book intense, and I found that I still remembered the scenes of cooking and eating though I had forgotten the details of the story from my childhood reading.
     I went to Books Kinokuniya in Shinjuku to reread this book, and found it in the home baking section! I also found many books in the Guri and Gura series in the children’s books area, of course. Not only have many Japanese children loved these books over the years, but they have been translated into other languages, so countless readers have shared my reading experience across borders and generations!