Pickle-Chiffon Pie Olympics

Back in print soon!

After nearly 50 years Jolly Roger wrote his sequel to Pickle-Chiffon Pie: Here’s the tale of a fourteenth-century Olympics, with sports like dragon wrestling and the 100-yard moat swim, in which the victor wins the hand of a fair princess — along with a surprise ending!

I, King Rupert Pickle XIV, hereby declare that all the characters and events chronicled in this tale are true and authentic. All the people portrayed by the author lived at the time of the Pickle-Chiffon Pie Olympics held in June of 1348.

The Olympic events reported in the story (dragon wrestling, the giant climb, the moat swim, etc.) actually took place and the winners accurately reported herein. None of the names were changed, nor were locations altered.

I have affixed my royal seal and do hereby attest to the accuracy of this statement. (Well, sort of.)

Rupert XIV

Hornbook Guide to Children (07/01/2011)
This decades-later sequel to Pickle-Chiffon Pie has a king insisting that his daughter marry not her beloved but the winner of a contest named for the castle delicacy. Part William Steig and part Monty Python (“the ten-mile bicycle race [was] made harder by the fact that bicycles hadn’t been invented yet”), this hilariously illustrated farce doesn’t even need the gross-sounding-pie motif. (Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

School Library Journal 7/2011
PreS-Gr 2. In this sequel to Bradfield’s fanciful Pickle-Chiffon Pie, Princess Sierra returns home from Princess College with designs to marry cute Prince Charminger. Thinking that curly hair and dimples are no basis for choosing a husband, her father decides to hold the Pickle-Chiffon Pie Olympics. Whoever emerges as the winner of the 10-day athletic competition will marry his daughter. Vowing to drown herself in the moat if she is not allowed to marry the man of her choice, Sierra storms off to stay with Aunt Venetia. Meanwhile, several eligible men, including mean Baron Brotwurst, brawny Peter Picklepicker, and a mysterious knight in black armor, compete in events such as the horseshoe toss (with the horse still attached), the giant climb, the 10-mile bicycle race (minus the bicycles, which have not yet been invented), and, of course, the discus-throw, using pickle-chiffon pies. Bradfield’s outlandish story moves along at a brisk pace until the strong-willed princess eventually gets her way. Bright, splotchy pen-and-ink drawings follow the lighthearted story. Overall, a fun additional purchase. —Martha Simpson, Stratford Library Association, CT