Long before the natural-food movement gained popularity, before greenmarkets sprouted across the United States, Edna Lewis championed purity of ingredients, regional cuisine, and the importance of bringing food directly from the farm to the table. She was a chef when female chefs---let alone African American female chefs---were few and far between, and she received many awards for her work. With lyrical text and glorious watercolor illustrations, author/illustrator Robbin Gourley lovingly traces the childhood roots of Edna's appreciation for the bounties of nature. The story follows Edna from early spring through the growing season to a family dinner celebrating a successful harvest. Folk rhymes, sayings, and songs about food are sprinkled throughout the text, and five kid-friendly recipes and an author's note about Edna's life are included at the end.
| ||||||||||||
Browse the best books for every age and adventure including popular series, classics, and editors' picks in our Kids Summer Reading Store. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 1–3—Edna Lewis was an African-American chef in New York City when neither women nor African Americans were generally in such positions. This story is loosely based on her childhood in rural Virginia where her family lived off the land. It was that upbringing that helped create the celebrated chef who understood the importance of fresh ingredients in her cooking. While young children may not understand about fresh ingredients and a career in cooking, they will enjoy learning about where the food they eat comes from. Gourley follows her character through the growing season, starting in early spring and ending with the autumn frost. The fruits, the berries, and the nuts they pick are all used in the meals the family eats, with the surplus being canned and preserved for the winter months. Gourley's luscious watercolors will have readers salivating as the berries plunk into pails and peach juice drips down chins. The story itself does run a little long for young listeners but the short ditties the children sing about what they are picking help to liven it up. Pair this title with Donald Hall's Ox-Cart Man (Penguin, 1979) to show children the rhythm of the seasons and a time when we were much more connected to the basics of life.—Joan Kindig, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Edna Lewis, the granddaughter of an emancipated slave who founded Freetown, Virginia, grew up to become a famous chef of southern cuisine. Inspired by Lewis’ childhood, this debut children’s book by an artist and cookbook author celebrates the growing seasons and the irreplaceable pleasure of fresh food shared with family. From spring’s wild strawberries to deep summer’s tangy tomatoes and fall’s harvest of nuts, each season brings a new delight on the Lewis family farm, and while young Edna helps harvest the crops, she dreams about what to make with each tantalizing new ingredient: strawberry shortcake, watermelon pickles, nut-butter cookies. Gourley’s colloquial words evoke the rhythms of southern speech, while frequent rhymes, spoken in the multiple voices of family members, increase the folksy flavor. Watercolors in bright, juicy colors echo the story’s themes of abundance in lush scenes of the fresh fruits and vegetables, the well-stocked pantry, and the African American family working and then dining together. A final biographical section about Lewis includes several southern, kid-friendly recipes. Grades K-3. --Gillian Engberg
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Mama2two
Format:Hardcover
What an amazing surprise! We just picked this up at the library and here i am to buy 3 copies! One for my family and two for birthday gifts. What a lovely read, making us hungry the entire time and then there are a few recipes in the back!!!!!! I'm jealous of the life described in the book, and all the yummy foods and family. Get this book!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By A. Williams
Format:Hardcover
The story is inspired by the life of chef and cookbook author Edna Lewis, with inspiration from the author's own childhood. The story takes us from the first call of the whippoorwill in spring through the last harvest before the winter. I like the idea of moving through the seasons based on what crop is harvested: strawberries in spring, blackberries in summer, apples in the fall. I also love how the author mentions various dishes the crops can be used in, and even how they are canned, preserved, etc., and held over as a little taste of summer during the winter. The sayings and rhymes that went with the various crops were fun, and I loved that there was a large family all working together. Colorful, illustrations added to this books enjoyment! There's nothing overly endearing about the book, but it is different and informative and a great way to introduce children to food, recipes and where food comes from.
Good author's note, and several yummy looking recipes included in the back matter!
Good author's note, and several yummy looking recipes included in the back matter!
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Edna Lewis' grandfather, a former slave, established Freetown, Virginia where all the little boys and girls could grow up free and enjoy life and nature as it should be. When the whippoorwill sang its song it meant it was time to get up and enjoy the onset of spring. Edna would learn about food for the soul and food for life with the seasons. Every season brought with it some special saying and food. Indeed, the lessons became so ingrained in her she became a very famous chef! In fact she was one of the very first African-American chefs.
`Most everyone had special things to say about food and the seasons. Her Daddy said:
"Sassafras heals what ails you.
Sassafras makes you feel all right.
Drink the tea in the morning
and sleep all night."
I loved the poetic lilt of the text and its complimentary watercolors. The reader will find a brief biography and photograph of the "real" Chef Edna Lewis in the back of the book followed by a few of Edna's original recipes. It would be lots of fun to make her Nut-Butter squares and read this adorable book!
`Most everyone had special things to say about food and the seasons. Her Daddy said:
"Sassafras heals what ails you.
Sassafras makes you feel all right.
Drink the tea in the morning
and sleep all night."
I loved the poetic lilt of the text and its complimentary watercolors. The reader will find a brief biography and photograph of the "real" Chef Edna Lewis in the back of the book followed by a few of Edna's original recipes. It would be lots of fun to make her Nut-Butter squares and read this adorable book!
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
"Start at the bottom and you pick 'em from the ground
And you pick the tree clean all the way around;
Then you set up your ladder and you climb up high
And you're looking through the leaves at the clear blue sky."
-- Larry Hanks, "Apple Picker's Reel"
Today is one of those days that cannot make up its mind. It was raining earlier this morning here in Sebastopol, and it remains rather chilly, but out of the upstairs skylight there are now glimpses of sun playing hide and seek behind the cover of white and gray clouds. The snow level last night was reportedly down to 2,000 feet, but the clouds are still blocking the mountains twenty miles to the east where snow might actually become visible this afternoon -- unless the view from my hillside remains obscured by low clouds and more rain.
It is a welcome day off, and I'm sitting here in solitude and flannel, dreaming of longer, warmer days to come.
"'Peaches!' Auntie sighs. 'Pure as angels. Sweet as love.'"
Those days are coming. Literally, in the time it has taken me to write this much, there are suddenly twice as many pink and white blossoms open on the plum trees outside my upstairs window than there were an hour ago. In just a few months I will be outside picking achingly sweet, perfect plums.
I planted those plum trees a decade ago, along with peaches and persimmons and apples and cherries and pears. I also planted an olive tree and a walnut tree. The old-fashioned seeded table grapes along a fence and the swarms of boysenberry brambles out front were already thriving for a generation or more by time I moved here in '86. There are also scattered blackberry brambles along my long, rutted driveway.
"'We're rich as kings as long as we have beans,' says Mama.... Read more ›
And you pick the tree clean all the way around;
Then you set up your ladder and you climb up high
And you're looking through the leaves at the clear blue sky."
-- Larry Hanks, "Apple Picker's Reel"
Today is one of those days that cannot make up its mind. It was raining earlier this morning here in Sebastopol, and it remains rather chilly, but out of the upstairs skylight there are now glimpses of sun playing hide and seek behind the cover of white and gray clouds. The snow level last night was reportedly down to 2,000 feet, but the clouds are still blocking the mountains twenty miles to the east where snow might actually become visible this afternoon -- unless the view from my hillside remains obscured by low clouds and more rain.
It is a welcome day off, and I'm sitting here in solitude and flannel, dreaming of longer, warmer days to come.
"'Peaches!' Auntie sighs. 'Pure as angels. Sweet as love.'"
Those days are coming. Literally, in the time it has taken me to write this much, there are suddenly twice as many pink and white blossoms open on the plum trees outside my upstairs window than there were an hour ago. In just a few months I will be outside picking achingly sweet, perfect plums.
I planted those plum trees a decade ago, along with peaches and persimmons and apples and cherries and pears. I also planted an olive tree and a walnut tree. The old-fashioned seeded table grapes along a fence and the swarms of boysenberry brambles out front were already thriving for a generation or more by time I moved here in '86. There are also scattered blackberry brambles along my long, rutted driveway.
"'We're rich as kings as long as we have beans,' says Mama.... Read more ›
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
