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When a new pancake machine and a pinch of experimental yeast turn breakfast batter into a friendly, wobbly blob, ten-year-old Nell Pepper must save Butterbell Bay’s Pancake Parade. With a listening whisk, a puffin named Pip, and the whole town, she flips chaos into comedy and pancakes into a triumph.
Breakfast at Pepper’s Diner sounded like applause. Skillets hissed and popped, spatulas clacked on cast iron, and somewhere a radio tried to play a cheerful tune under the racket and butter-scented steam. Nell Pepper stood on a wooden crate behind the grill because her elbows didn’t yet reach level with the pancake battlefield. Her hair was tied up in a bandana the color of ripe raspberries, and she wore an apron with a patch that read Assistant Flipper, which she had stitched herself in wobbly letters.
“Low and quick,” Grandma Pepper said, leaning on the counter. “Treat the pancake like a timid turtle. If you go slow and polite, it will let you flip it.”
Nell squinted at the sizzling circle before her. “Timid turtle,” she repeated. She slid the spatula under the pancake, counted to three, and flicked her wrist. The pancake somersaulted like a gymnast, landed mostly round, and gave off a fresh whiff of vanilla.
A cheer rose from two regulars in the booth by the window. “That’s my granddaughter,” Grandma crowed, thumping the counter with a coffee mug. “In a year I’ll have her doing double flips.”
Nell beamed, then immediately got syrup on her sleeve. She tried to wipe it on the apron, then stuck to the apron like a sticker. She did a tiny side shuffle to unglue herself and knocked a spoon to the floor. The spoon pinged, and a seagull outside pecked the glass at the sound.
Butterbell Bay lay just beyond the diner windows in a glitter of early sun. Shrimp boats bobbed. The lighthouse winked. Children ran by on the boardwalk, practicing dramatic parade waves with cardboard crowns. Banners flapped from every lamppost: Pancake Parade Tomorrow! Bring Your Appetite! Somebody had drawn a smiley face in syrup on one banner. It was slowly dripping a third eye.
“Big day tomorrow,” said Paulo, the delivery kid, sliding through the back door with a crate of eggs. He was thin and fast and smelled like cinnamon rolls, because he cut through the bakery alley on his route. “I heard the mayor ordered some kind of automatic contraption to help with cooking. It’s got arms.”
“Arms?” Nell paused mid-flip. The pancake fell a little crooked. “Like… octopus arms?”
Grandma snorted. “Mayor Goodberry will buy anything if it has a shiny brochure. Don’t you worry. Machines don’t know the sound of a done pancake. Hear that?” She tilted her head toward the grill. “It’s whispering ‘now.’”
Nell listened. The edges crackled differently when a pancake was ready. It was like the tiniest applause from the batter. She slid the next one off, proud. The radio fizzled into a weather update. A gull whooped. The bell over the door jingled.
Mayor Goodberry entered with a gust of paper and cologne. He was short and barrel-shaped, wore a hat with a feather, and measured his happiness with handshakes per minute. Today he shook three hands before he reached the counter. “Pepper! My favorite cook and my favorite young assistant! Big news. The Flap-O-Matic 3000 arrives at noon.”
Grandma Pepper eyed his hat. “At noon I take a nap.”