There are all sorts of skin tones, hair and ages represented here, the air tinged with love and connection around them.Ī beautiful and inclusive picture book that takes a deep look at food, family and history. They show a diverse group of family members gathering to cook together. The illustrations of this book are so warm and merry.

This is a celebration that Native Americans have survived and live on, continuing to gather, eat and celebrate. The nuance of a food being both celebratory and yet also indicative of what happened to an entire people, is an important one. Much of the real detail of this is in the Author’s Note at the end of the book, but even the briefer read-aloud part of the book offers this connection to children. Maillard looks at its connection to our nation’s history, the damage caused by the European invasion, and what fry bread means today. This picture book is about far more than a delicious family treat. It brings families together to celebrate their heritage, but also to realize where fry bread came from and how it relates to the massacres of Native peoples in the United States. Fry bread looks different depending on how long you fry it, tastes different depending on the recipe and the cook. Children of all ages participate in forming the bread and then listen together as it fries in the pan.

In this picture book, a diverse Native family comes together to make fry bread together. Fry bread may be first and foremost a food, but it is also about family. Told in a repeating format explaining all of the things that fry bread is, this picture book celebrates an iconic food in Native American families. If you would like to buy this book on Amazon, click here.Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal ( 9781626727465) The cute illustrations by Caldecott honoree Martinez-Neal will appeal to the youngest readers.Ĭons: The word “story” in the subtitle made me think I was going to get a story, but this is really more in the nonfiction category. The simple act of making fry bread is elevated to a unifying part of Indigenous cultures and heritage. Pros: Although this is an excellent resource to share with young children, all the end matter also makes it a useful book for older kids and even adults.

The author shares his fry bread recipe at the end, followed by eight pages that give a lot more historical and cultural information about each page of the main text. Each page starts with a statement about fry bread: “Fry bread is food”, “Fry bread is shape”, “Fry bread is sound”, followed by a few lines of poetic text elaborating on this idea, shown in illustrations featuring a diverse group of children and their families. Summary: Starting with the endpapers, which list all the Indigenous nations and communities in the United States, this book celebrates many different Native groups while showing the commonality they share in making and eating fry bread.

Fry bread book