JOSÉ FEEDS THE WORLD

José Andrés Puerta, an award-winning Spanish American chef, uses his gift to help people in need.

Ever since José was a boy, he enjoyed cooking. Inspired by his parents, who showed him that he could help improve people’s lives in different ways, he went away to cooking school in Barcelona at 15 and became a chef’s assistant at the world-famous El Bulli. His professional journey eventually took him to Washington, D.C., where he opened his own restaurant. In 2010, an earthquake devastated much of Haiti. José, by then an award-winning chef, gathered a group of friends and went there to cook for the survivors. When he returned to D.C., he founded a nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, dedicated to providing free meals to survivors of natural and human-made disasters, work that’s enabled him to help affected communities all over the world. Vivid illustrations that depict compelling scenes rendered in rich color add tone and nuance to a flat, dry narrative that sticks to the facts at the expense of emotional depth. Condensing an entire professional life into a picture book means that the text eschews details, although some added information would have made for a more compelling story. Parts of the chef’s life—such as when he asks the Ukrainian people to become “Food Fighters”—are dropped into the story without explanation, leaving readers with questions the text does not answer.

Rich illustrations buoy a lackluster narrative.