An interesting sketch of a pioneering restaurateur that will be sure to inspire budding cooks and changemakers.
When she was a little girl, Alice Waters picked fresh strawberries from the yard of her family’s New Jersey home.
All summer, her family would make delicious food using fresh produce from the garden. The story jumps forward to Alice’s college years in France, where she is amazed by the quality of the food—all made with fresh ingredients. She brings the French style of food preparation back to the U.S., where she eventually opens a restaurant—with the help of friends and patrons—called Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. Alice wants nothing less than to serve the best food ever, made with fresh, local ingredients. Bucking the trend of buying products from giant agribusiness, she drives all over Northern California establishing partnerships with small farms that become her suppliers. Alice’s passion for natural, healthy food starts the farm-to-table and slow food movements, revolutionizing food culture and giving children more access to fresh fruit and vegetables. The present-tense narrative lends immediacy to the story, and Hartland’s detailed gouache illustrations impart a sense of joy and adventure.
An interesting sketch of a pioneering restaurateur that will be sure to inspire budding cooks and changemakers. (appendix, timeline, bibliography) (Picture book biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6140-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
A fascinating historical character is presented in terms easy for young children to appreciate, and requests to experiment...
One of America’s most famous 20th-century immigrants, Joyce Chen, gained notoriety the hard way.
Brought up in pre-revolutionary China, Chen left Shanghai with her husband and two children in 1949 to immigrate to the U.S., where she settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lively cartoonish pastel-and-crayon illustrations and rhyming couplets show how young Jia (later renamed Joyce) learned to cook with a man the text simply calls Cook, possibly a family servant, mastering the traditional art of making dumplings, noodles, and sweet rice balls. At the dragon boat festival, she proudly presents her father with her own creation, zongzi rice packages tightly tied “with five bright strings.” Once in the U.S., Joyce and her children face the challenge of life in America: “New words to learn. Strange food to try.” Chen becomes a mentor to other Chinese immigrants and is soon inspired to open a restaurant. The restaurant is immediately popular, but her dumplings aren’t. She overcomes the perception of Chinese food as “gluey stew” by rebranding her dumplings as “Peking Ravioli.” A cookbook and a TV show soon follow, and she has successfully introduced authentic Chinese cuisine to the East Coast. A timeline, glossary, bibliography, and dumpling recipes are included.
A fascinating historical character is presented in terms easy for young children to appreciate, and requests to experiment with dumpling dough will certainly ensue. (Picture book/biography. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6707-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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Deelytful and iloominaating for noo and seesuned reeders alyk.
Two Founding Fathers team up for their own miniature revolution—to simplify and standardize American English.
Printer Ben Franklin couldn’t stand inconsistent spelling. He wanted to invent some new and remove some old letters to create a phonetic alphabet. Noah Webster also couldn’t stand our inconsistent alphabet. He wanted to create a guide to grammar and pronunciation. Both wanted to change the way that Americans used English: “Using twenty-six letters to write forty-four sounds caused nothing but trouble.” The two visionaries teamed up to tackle the problem of the “inconvenient alphabet,” crafting a new alphabet—one in which letters matched sounds and sounds matched letters. When this idea failed to gain widespread support, Webster came up with new plans, this time to revolutionize spelling. His plans for seemingly simpler spellings were also rejected by the populace, leading Webster to create his best-known work: his dictionary. Both Anderson’s text and Baddeley’s illustrations are energetic and compelling. The latter playfully elucidate examples of the linguistic nuances discussed, showing (for instance) Webster and Franklin manually taking silent letters out of words such as “walk” and “knock.” The majority of illustrated figures are white, although a variety of skin tones are presented in each group illustration.
Deelytful and iloominaating for noo and seesuned reeders alyk. (author’s and illustrator’s notes, quotation sources, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-0555-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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