Review - Fry Bread

Fry Bread
by Kevin Noble Maillard
illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal
Date: 2019
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book non-fiction
Pages: 42
Format: e-book
Source: library

Fry bread is food.
It is warm and delicious, piled high on a plate.

Fry bread is time.
It brings families together for meals and new memories.

Fry bread is nation.
It is shared by many, from coast to coast and beyond.

Fry bread is us.
It is a celebration of old and new, traditional and modern, similarity and difference.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is totally not what I expected. Instead of a simple picture book about about fry bread, it's an introduction to a long author's note. As such, it's a wordy non-fiction title, and not really suitable for storytime.

It's also extremely Americocentric, even while briefly acknowledging that Canada also has native peoples. So Canadian parents who were looking for a book that discusses fry bread and its implications and traditions in an inclusive way will probably want to look elsewhere.

For what it is, it's fine. The information is interesting. The pictures are pleasant to look at. But I'm not a fan of the way the book is laid out. It makes for a long, heavy reading session. In the simple story section at the front, we get a lot of words without much context. That comes later, when each spread of the story is meticulously explained in the author's note. So you'll probably be doing a lot of flipping back and forth. (For a book like this, I think I would've rather preferred the factual information provided within the story itself as sidebars. It would make reading the story out loud to an audience tricky, but I don't know if the story can really stand on its own, anyway.)

Overall, this is decent if you're looking for a quasi-textbook for young readers about Native American traditions and history strictly in the United States. If, however, you're looking for a book that's inclusive of all the Indigenous North American cultures that celebrate fry bread, you'll probably find that this one comes up short.

Premise: 3/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 3/5
Illustrations: 4/5
Originality: 4/5

Enjoyment: 3/5

Overall: 3.33 out of 5