52 pages • 1 hour read
Polly HorvathEverything on a Waffle
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
End-of-Chapter Recipes
At some point in each of the novel’s 15 chapters, Primrose refers to an item of food, such as boiled potatoes, shepherd’s pie, or pear soup, and follows the mention of that item with the parenthetical phrase: “recipe to follow” (1). At the end of the chapter, she offers a recipe to prepare the mentioned food. In A Year in Coal Harbor, Horvath’s sequel to this novel, the author uses the same literary device, making these two mid-grade books quasi-cookbooks as well.
The recipes, which Primrose gathers from different sources, tend to be casually stated rather than exacting. For example, Primrose offers Aunt Tilly’s recipe for lemon sugar cookies and, when discussing the bake time, offers: “She didn’t say how long but probably until slightly brown. That will usually do it” (30). The lack of specific information about the recipes conveys the mindset of an 11-year-old and also the cooking attitude of her mentor, Miss Bowzer, who improvises continually in the kitchen, sometimes devising recipes when Primrose expresses curiosity about how to prepare a dish.
Horvath uses these recipes as an opportunity for Primrose to make editorial comments. When she shares the recipe for Miss Perfidy’s tea biscuits, she concludes with, “Then age for ten days in a drawer full of mothballs. They won’t be tasty but they’ll be authentic” (64). In this quote, Primrose comments on the pervasive aroma of mothballs surrounding every vestige of Miss Perfidy, including the food she serves. Primrose’s opinions and attitudes, seldom voiced aloud to the adults around her, come out in these recipes.
First-Person Narrative
Horvath employs the first-person narrative point-of-view in Everything on a Waffle, speaking through the protagonist, Primrose. The narrative begins with Primrose specifically addressing the reader as if she is personally telling the reader her story through a series of direct sentences as a middle school child might introduce herself. Though she begins the first paragraph with three, simple, declarative sentences, she finishes the paragraph with a complex sentence that describes her appearance while simultaneously imparting the idea of depth and turbulence beneath the childlike façade: “I have hair the color of carrots in an apricot glaze (recipe to follow), skin fair and clear where it isn’t freckled, and eyes like summer storms” (1). By the end of the first paragraph, the narrator has signaled that things below the surface of the narrative are afoot.
Primrose speaks candidly to the reader in part because few adults in her life listen to her. Her first caregiver, Miss Perfidy, continually leaves the room when Primrose tries to converse with her. Miss Honeycut, the counselor charged with having Primrose’s best interest at heart, refuses to listen to her explanations. Uncle Jack, a person with no parental skills, brushes past Primrose’s requests and suggestions. Shopkeepers assume she is stealing. The Sheriff patronizes her. The only adults who respond to Primrose in a manner demonstrating they listen to her are Miss Bowzer and her eventual foster parents, Evie and Bert.
While the adults around her fail to hear Primrose, she expresses her inner awarenesses to the reader. Reflecting on the reality of leaving elements of her possessions at her own home, Miss Perfidy’s home, and Uncle Jack’s home, Primrose says, “It sent me deeper into a funny, detached, dreamlike state. I do not live anywhere anymore, I said to myself […]. I am not in the body of life. I hover on the extremities. I float” (12). Though Primrose does not complain to the authorities around her, her frustration comes through clearly to the reader, such as when she ends up far from her home community with an odd set of foster parents:
They had been too old to adopt and hadn’t even had much luck getting their hands on a foster child until me. Although I was happy to provide them with some measure of happiness, it wasn’t home and after a while I was restless beyond belief (108).
Foreshadowing
Horvath employs several techniques to foreshadow coming events in the narrative. Often, the author does this near the end of a chapter, as when she forewarns at the end of Chapter 11 that she will soon move away against her will: “ […] Uncle Jack always had a solution for everything and this one would have been just about perfect if it hadn’t gone so wrong and landed me in a foster home” (106). The next chapter begins with Primrose describing her foster parents, then in a flashback explaining what went wrong, causing her to become a ward of Child Protective Services.
The author employs another technique to foreshadow in Chapter 13, entitled “Fire!” This title alerts the reader to coming events, as do many of the chapter titles: “I Am Almost Incarcerated,” “I Set Fire to A Guinea Pig,” and “I Lose Another Digit.” With Chapter 13, another type of foreshadowing occurs at the end of the chapter when, during supper, “someone came running into the restaurant and yelled ‘Fire’!”
The primary example of foreshadowing, however, is Primrose’s continued insistence that her parents survived the typhoon and will return to their lives in Coal Harbor. The author tempts the reader not to believe they will return by suggesting through the voices of other characters that Primrose is in denial so as to avoid the grief she should be feeling. Horvath also allows another character, Miss Perfidy, to die, implying that death is a possibility in this narrative. When her parents return, however, Primrose’s continual assurances prove correct. She knew and tried to tell the reader throughout.
