by Coco Simon
“Games! Games! Games!” the kids started chanting.
Mrs. Delfino smiled at us apologetically. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” Alexis said crisply. When she’s on a job, she’s all business. “We’re ready.”
“Come on, kids!” Emma said loudly. “Who wants to play Pass the Cupcake?”
Sixteen hands flew into the air at once. “Meeeee!”
I kind of got into it when we played the games. We played Pass the Cupcake first. Mia had sewn a cute cupcake out of felt, and the kids sat in a circle and passed it around when the music played. When the music stopped, the kid holding the cupcake had to leave the circle.
It went pretty well until one little girl started crying when she got out. I almost panicked again. But then I had an idea. I grabbed the girl’s hands.
“Everybody outside the circle gets to dance!” I cried, and then I started to dance and twirl around with her. It worked! She stopped crying, and soon all the kids outside the circle were laughing and dancing.
After that, we played Pin the Cherry on the Cupcake using a beautiful poster of a cupcake Mia had drawn, and big cherries cut out of paper. Then we did cupcake relay races, where the runners had to balance a cupcake on the end of a spatula while they were running (instead of the usual egg on a spoon). There was a lot of icing on the grass, but the kids seemed to really like it.
“Great job, everybody!” Alexis called out. “And now it’s time to decorate cupcakes. Madison, since you’re the birthday girl, you get to go first.”
“Yay!” Madison’s big brown eyes shone with excitement as she ran to the cupcake table. Her party guests were excited too, and they quickly crowded around her.
“One at a time! One at a time!” Alexis yelled, but the five-year-olds ignored her, swarming around the table and grabbing the cupcakes, sprinkles, and candy toppings.
“Hey! There are spoons for that!” Alexis scolded.
Mia, Emma, and I quickly jumped in to help. I picked up a spoon and tried to show one blond-haired boy how to gently sprinkle some edible green glitter on to his cupcake. He took the spoon from me, dipped it in the glitter . . . and then threw the glitter all over the little girl next to him!
The girl looked stunned. She brushed the green glitter off her face . . . and then started to cry.
“Oh no. Not again,” I said, moaning. I didn’t think dancing was going to help this one. “We’ve got another code red!”
But everyone was too busy to come to my rescue. Emma was wiping off frosting from Madison’s face, Mia was patiently creating a smiley face made out of candies on another girl’s cupcake, and Alexis was marching up and down the table, trying to regain order.
“Icing goes on the cupcake, not on your hands!” she shouted. “And, Leonard, do not put the sprinkle spoon in your mouth!”
Within minutes, the kids were more decorated than the cupcakes.
Mrs. Delfino approached the table, looking flustered. “Oh dear! This is quite a mess!”
We stopped and looked at one another. Our client did not look happy—and that was bad for business.
“It’s, um, all part of the fun,” I said cheerfully. “And don’t worry, we’ll clean it up. Who wants to play the Clean-Up Game?”
Sixteen sticky hands flew in the air. “Meeeeeeee!”
Luckily, Emma had thought to pack a big tub of wet wipes. I got out the box and gave one to each kid.
“Okay, now it’s time to clean our hands, hands, hands,” I instructed in a singsong voice, and luckily, the kids all played along. Next, I had them clean their faces, elbows, and even their knees (that’s how messy everyone was!). In the end we had one big pile of messy wet wipes and one yard full of clean kids.
“It’s time to sing the birthday song!” Mrs. Delfino announced, and as the kids followed her inside, we collapsed on the grassy lawn, exhausted.
“Katie, you were so good with the kids!” Mia said.
“Yeah, I’ll have to remember that clean-up game for Jake,” Emma said.
I frowned. “Well, thanks, but that was still awful. Doesn’t this prove we should stick to just cupcakes from now on?”
“Absolutely not,” Alexis said. “It just means we need to perfect our plan. Until that big cupcake mess, everything was going really well.”
“Yeah.” Mia nodded in agreement. “It was kind of fun, too.”
“Definitely,” said Emma. “And let’s not forget the extra money. It’s worth it.”
I sighed. “I guess you’re right. You know me. I don’t really like changing the way I do things. In fifth grade, I wore the same pair of purple sneakers every day for a year. My mother said she had to peel them off my feet, literally.”
Everyone laughed.
“Don’t worry, Katie,” Alexis said. “Our new business plan is going to be great. You’ll see.”
“Fine,” I said. “But next time, let’s leave the icing on the cupcakes, okay?”
How well do you know the Cupcake girls?
Take our quiz and find out!
(If you don’t want to write in your book, use a separate piece of paper.)
1. Emma has three brothers. What are their names?
A. Joe, Mark, and Sam
B. Matt, Sam, and John
C. Jake, Matt, and Sam
D. Tom, Dick, and Harry
2. Who loves to dance?
A. Mia
B. Alexis
C. Emma
D. Katie
3. What unusual ingredient do the girls use in one of their most popular cupcakes?
A. Salami
B. French fries
C. Bacon
D. Pizza
4. Where does Emma model?
A. At the summer day camp
B. At The Special Day wedding salon
C. At the local swimming pool
D. At school dances
5. Mia has a BFF in New York whose first name has three letters too. What is her friend’s name?
A. Amy
B. Gia
C. Ava
D. Ivy
6. George teases Katie and calls her a funny nickname. (But it’s okay though because Katie knows he likes her.) What is the nickname?
A. Chicken Legs
B. Silly Arms
C. Bigfoot
D. Man Hands
7. Which Cupcake girl has curly red hair?
A. Alexis
B. Mia
C. Katie
D. Emma
8. Who is the “mean girl” who loves to torture the Cupcake girls?
A. Sydney
B. Beth
C. Olivia
D. Both A and C
Did you get the right answers?
1. C
2. B
3. C
4. B
5. C
6. B
7. A
8. D
What your answers mean:
If you got all 8 answers right:
Wow! You know your Cupcake girls.
Four cupcakes for you!
If you got 6 to 7 answers right:
Pretty good! You just need to brush up a little bit on your four Cupcake friends. Two cupcakes for you!
If you got 4 to 5 answers right:
You need to reread your favorite Cupcake books, but you get one cupcake for your efforts!
If you got less than four answers right:
You’re not paying attention. Reread this book (and all your favorite Cupcake books) right now! No cupcake for you—have a cookie!
Coco Simon always dreamed of opening a cupcake bakery but was afraid she would eat all of the profits. When she’s not daydreaming about cupcakes, Coco edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes she’s eaten. Cupcake Diaries is the first time Coco has mixed her love of cupcakes with writing.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical eve
nts, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON SPOTLIGHT
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2013 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON SPOTLIGHT and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Text by Elizabeth Doyle Carey
Chapter header illustrations by Ciara Gay
Designed by Laura Roode
ISBN 978-1-4424-6867-2
ISBN 978-1-4424-6868-9 (eBook)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2012953609