“Through food, my grandmother and my mother taught me so much about life and culture and being a person in the world. And so I’m hoping that, through this book, I can encourage families to actively cook together, to value the recipes that they’ve been making for their family get togethers and also to remember all of the different people who bring us our food and to be mindful of our environment,” says Lakshmi.
The words are brought to life with beautiful artwork by Juana Martinez-Neal, who was awarded a Caldecott Honor for “Alma and How She Got Her Name.” Lakshmi shared an online folder of family photos to help make Neela and her mom resemble the author and her daughter, while Martinez-Neal tapped into her own memories of going to markets in Peru for fresh produce to recreate a bustling green market.
Her images are full of life and textures and movement, giving the reader a sense of a busy kitchen full of love, with warm smells and mom’s bangles creating a gentle rhythm as she slices.
“It could feel like something very flat and two dimensional, but we tried to bring it to a full, sensory experience — we have sound, we have taste. We have the feel of everything,” says Martinez-Neal.
The idea of adding farmworkers to the book came from a suggestion by Martinez-Neal. “It’s so easy to forget who is doing that work,” she says. Lakshmi loved the idea and added context and reference material about farmworkers at the end of the book.
