Let Me Fix You a Plate: A Tale of Two Kitchens

K-Gr 2–Lilly’s second picture book is full of warmth, good food, and most importantly, the love of grandparents and extended family. A young girl and her family leave their home in the city after school one Friday and drive for “hours and hours” to visit grandparents in two distinct locales. Traveling first to the mountains of West Virginia, the narrator and her sisters are welcomed late at night to Mamaw and Papaw’s house with the greeting of “Let me fix you a plate.” After several days in the mountains with her father’s white family they travel to Florida where they are greeted by their Spanish-speaking Abuela who invites them in with “Hay comidita adentro. Comense. There’s food inside. Come and eat.” The warmth and love of the family and their relatives is abundantly clear in colors and lines that evoke emotion and details of the two different cultures that are also similar to one another. The end papers are full of details that invite readers to think about the artifacts that are part of their family’s heritage. This title would be an ideal writing or art prompt for students to encourage them to share stories of the cultures that comprise their family.