Mikey Please Books

The Cave Downwind of the Café is the second book by author Mikey Please. His debut picture book, The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods, won the Waterstones Children’s Book of the Year 2025.

This book provides a wonderful way to introduce the prequel to the original story. Glumfoot dreams about delicious food, yet every morning he is served the same thing by his father – bogey broth! Glumfoot longs for something sweeter and is overjoyed when one day his nose leads him to the cafe at the edge of the woods! The pastries fill the forest with delicious smells. However, Glumfoot is not the only one to smell the scent – a hungry ogre has decided he must eat the owner of the café (”I heard humans taste rather good.”)

There’ll be no pastries if the baker, Rene, is eaten by the ogre, so it’s down to Glumfoot to warn the ogre off eating humans. He does so by describing how human taste disgusting – but this only encourages the ogre even more. A change of plan is needed! Glumfoot uses his love of sweet things to persuade the ogre that human taste disgusting.

The rhyme works very well – children will enjoy adding the humorous rhyming words at the ends of the lines and will enjoy its rhythmic nature when read aloud.