DUMPLING DAY

The aromas of homemade food sneak their way across an entire multicultural neighborhood as growling bellies wait to be filled with…dumplings!

Recipes from Nigeria, Syria, China, Russia, Mexico, and more reveal tasty fillings tucked into doughs that are boiled, steamed, fried, and baked. There are potato-filled samosas and gyoza bursting with ground pork, bourekas stuffed with potatoes and cheese and shish barak swimming in yogurt soup. Count along as 10 scrumptious dumplings formed by 10 pairs of loving hands in 10 busy kitchens are placed on 10 different plates. The block party is ready to start—a dumpling picnic for all! “We eat and laugh and gather round, / We party till the sun goes down.” Sriram’s simple rhyming story celebrating the unifying magic of food pairs well with the childlike naïveté of de Antuñano’s inclusive and diverse gouache illustrations. Without skipping a beat, she folds words for both dumplings and family members and their respective languages into her couplets. However, the appended recipe for tamales includes a fatal typo, to be corrected in subsequent printings. Instead of calling for dried masa flour or corn flour (two words), the recipe lists cornstarch/cornflour (the British term for cornstarch) which will produce a gravy/sludge and not a dough. Backmatter includes a map of food origins, a glossary of kinship terms, and recipes for each type of dumpling. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A fun food counting book.