A Cookie for the President

From its half-baked premise to its inept illustrations, this book from a pair of newcomers is more crumb than cookie. Amelia, the President's best cook, wants a law mandating that all children have dessert every day. The President, in turn, wants larger desserts with his dinner. And so the influence-peddling begins. As the President works on devising the new law, Amelia creates bigger and bigger treats, each night needing more and more people to hoist the goodies up the stairs. Discouraged and worn out by her Herculean labors, she scales back her request, asking only that dessert be legislated one night a year for the children of Washington, D.C. Finally, Amelia bakes the President a cookie so huge that it doesn't fit through the stairway and must be served on the White House lawn--and there her dream comes true: ``Soon all the children from miles around were eating the cookie on the lawn.'' Collins's art, cartoonish at best, is as amateurish as the writing. Ages 5-9. (Nov.)