Pizza for Breakfast

Ted McGee is an associate professor of English at St. Jerome’s
College, University of Waterloo.

Pizza for Breakfast (originally published as Frank and Zelda) is a story
about the catastrophic consequences of having one’s wishes come true.

Frank and Zelda, who own a pizza parlor adjacent to Mel’s Summer Hat
and Glove Factory in an old, inner-city neighborhood, do a booming
business, which keeps them busy and happy. But when Mel’s factory
closes, Frank and Zelda’s business along with their spirits and their
relationship go into decline, until a strange, little man offers to buy
a pizza—not with cash but with wishes that will come true. Frank and
Zelda sell him a pizza and get what they wish for: rows of waiters, a
huge new restaurant, and crowds of people desiring pizza—even for
breakfast. Alas, what they really get is their booming business of the
past but with a vengeance, which makes them equally unhappy.

Set mainly in the 1920s, Kovalski’s watercolor illustrations, while
portraying stereotypical human figures, effectively capture, by means of
a few, carefully selected features, the style of architecture, dress,
and decor of that period. But they skip from the days when the pizza
business was brisk to the day on which the little stranger appears, thus
eliding the problems of Frank and Zelda that the text establishes.
Though the illustrations have some comic touches, especially in the
depiction of the mysterious customer, Pizza for Breakfast remain in its
style, content, and implications a picture book not chiefly for children
but for adults. Recommended with reservations.