A picture is worth a thousand words, but one bite of a beloved dish can convey more emotion than a literary master’s entire oeuvre—just think of Proust’s madeleine. Food is entwined with memory. It’s often synonymous with identity, family, culture. In short, it speaks volumes, as these recent middle-grade works demonstrate.
In Kate O’Shaughnessy’s Lasagna Means I Love You (Knopf, Feb. 21), cooking and food are stepping stones in a young girl’s search for family. When Mo’s grandmother dies, she’s sent to live with foster parents. She soon finds an outlet for her grief: collecting other people’s family recipes and posting them online…and, she hopes, learning more about her own family. Though Mo grapples with sorrow, loneliness, and even rage, O’Shaughnessy leavens the heavy subject material with humor and heart. Ultimately this tale is rooted in joy as Mo forges connections while exploring her newfound passion.
Cooking wunderkind Flynn McGarry, 25, sees himself as an artist and food as his medium. His memoir, This Is Not a Cookbook: A Chef’s Creative Process From Imagination to Creation (Delacorte, April 18), illustrated by Adil Dara, details his trajectory from hosting dinner parties at 13 to opening a New York City restaurant at 19. Most readers won’t have access to the opportunities McGarry enjoyed—for instance, his parents allowed him to adapt their dining room into a professional-style kitchen—but would-be chefs will be charmed by his quirky narrative and stirred by his passion and vision; his account of pioneering a recipe for “beet Wellington” is especially compelling.
Can food transform the world? Readers will be convinced it can after finishing The Antiracist Kitchen: 21 Stories (and Recipes) (Orca, Oct. 17), edited by Nadia L. Hohn and illustrated by Roza Nozari. In this moving, inspired work, kid-lit authors of color share favorite recipes while mulling race, culture, and racism. Food can engender shame, as illustrated by stories of kids who are teased for seemingly unusual lunches, but it also has the power to effect change, foster understanding, and help us learn who we are. Janice Lynn Mather discusses how preparing plantains allowed her to grapple with the feeling that she wasn’t truly Bahamian, while “Mami’s apple and guava cake” helped Ruth Behar balance her Cuban and American identities.
With Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods (Little Brown, Sept. 12), Grace Lin shows that what we eat nourishes not only our bodies but our minds. Organizing her gorgeously illustrated book like the menu of a typical Chinese American restaurant, with sections devoted to teas, soups, side orders, and main courses, she displays both a storyteller’s flair and a researcher’s doggedness as she delves into the lore behind everything from chopsticks to fortune cookies. Though dishes such as General Tso’s Chicken are often dismissed as inauthentic compared with the cuisine eaten in China, Lin makes clear that these foods reflect the determination and creativity of the immigrants who adapted them for an American palate: “Chinese American cuisine is the flavor of resilience, the flavor of adaptability, the flavor of persistence and triumph. Above anything, this food is the flavor of America.”
Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.
