Friday, November 8, 2019

Fry Bread -- Perfect Picture Book Friday

Native American Heritage Month


cover art for Fry Bread

Title: Fry Bread: a Native American Family Tradition
Author: Kevin Noble Maillard 
Illustrator: Juana Martinez-Neal
Publisher: Roaring Book Press, 2019

Opening pages:

Fry Bread is Food
Flour, salt, water
Cornmeal, baking powder
Perhaps milk, maybe sugar
All mixed together in a bowl

This book! 

How do I describe it? It is poetry. It is history. It is truth. It is sadness and happiness. It is simple and complex. It is beautiful and powerful. It is a book for reading together and for discussing. It is for young and old.

"Fry Bread is Everything
Round, flat, large, small
North, South, East, West
Familiar and foreign, old and new
We come together"

It is a doorway to understanding, loving, making amends, opening our eyes, and creating a better future.

At the end of the book there are 8 pages of author's notes and another page of references and footnotes. So much information in a beautiful picture book.

Juana Martinez-Neal's illustrations are joyful, lively, thoughtful, sad, true and engaging. They were created in acrylics, colored pencil, and graphite on hand-textured paper.


Activities and Resources:

At the end of the book there is a recipe for Kevin's Fry Bread. This would be a wonderful family activity.

I found a recipe that is gluten free.

Activities for Native American Heritage Month



As always you can read about more perfect Picture Books at Susanna Hill's blog. Her last Perfect Picture Book was this same book. It is one worth sharing over and over again. Be sure to check out the wonderful list by themes on this page.

6 comments:

  1. Wow, I definitely want to read this. Your review of it was so poetic, I can't imagine how great the book just be, thanks fir sharing!

    Sincerely,
    Kaitlyn Sanchez

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad you liked the review. The book is so poetic, I didn't want my words to distract from that beauty. I wish I had lots of money and could buy copies for every school and every library.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This one has been on my list, but I haven't gotten it yet. Putting it at the top. i love the poetry aspect of it. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a charming story with a recipe. Kids will love that!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've never heard the term fry bread. It's called bannock around here :)
    This is definitely a book I want to read. I'm glad you highlighted it!

    ReplyDelete