Lorenzo, the Pizza-Loving Lobster

PreS-Gr 2—An adventurous lobster named Lorenzo finds a seagull eating something delicious from a paper plate on the beach. Unlike any other seagull in the real world, this bird invites Lorenzo to share his pizza. And Lorenzo loves it! He rushes to tell his friends about his wonderful food discovery. He and his friend Kalena the turtle want to try to make their own pizza, but they have no idea how to do it. They use ingredients that Lobster has around the kitchen, like seaweed cake, kelp paste, eelgrass, and sand dollars. After the pizza is baked, it is just not right. They keep trying other marine ingredients, but the results are disappointing. On her way home, Kalena smells a delicious real pizza being cooked at a food stand on the beach and buys one to bring back to Lorenzo. They study the real pizza carefully so they can create one successfully and have a big pizza party for their friends. Colorful cartoon illustrations brighten the text, adding humorous details to the words. The illustrations do take some liberties for graphic appeal: lobsters are only red after they have been cooked! The silly, yucky ingredients Lorenzo and Kalena use to make their first pizza will delight readers. The making of the first pizza is really the heart of the story, and everything else just supports that idea.