Alice Fleck's Recipes for Disaster

Alice Fleck's father is a culinary historian, and for as long as she can remember, she's been helping him recreate meals from the past a hobby she prefers to keep secret from kids her age. But when her father's new girlfriend enters them into a cooking competition at a Victorian festival, Alice finds herself and her hobby thrust into the spotlight.

And that's just the first of many surprises awaiting her. On arriving at the festival, Alice learns that she and her father are actually contestants on Culinary Combat, a new reality TV show hosted by Tom Truffleman, the most famous and fierce judge on TV! And to make matters worse, she begins to suspect that someone is at work behind the scenes, sabotaging the competition.

It's up to Alice, with the help of a few new friends, to find the saboteur before the entire competition is ruined, all the while tackling some of the hardest cooking challenges of her life...for the whole world to see. (From Puffin Canada)

Alice Fleck's Recipes for Disaster is a finalistfor the 2022Silver Birch Fiction Award, which celebrates fiction books for readers in Grades 3-6.

Rachelle Delaney is a Canadian author of several middle-grade novels. Her debutnovel,The Ship of Lost Souls, was shortlisted for the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize, the Chocolate Lily Book Awardand the Red Cedar Award.

• 28 Canadian middle-grade books coming out in spring 2021
• Here are the 2022 Silver Birch Fiction Award finalists