Stay for Dinner: A Picture Book (Sandhya Parappukkaran, Michelle Pereira)

From the storytellers behind the award-winning The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name comes a powerful picture book about culture and connection through food, perfect for fans of Soul Food Sunday.

This gentle picture book speaks to the anxieties many children have about not fitting in with their peers, and celebrates the ways food can connect us to our cultures and to each other.

Reshma loves dinnertime with her family. Their table is full of squishy splashy curies, crispy crunchy papadums, and heaping piles of rice. Her family scoops and mixes their delicious dinner with their fingers and Ammama always finishes the meal with a complementary burp.

When Reshma is invited to for dinner at her friends’ houses, she sees that not everyone eats like her family. At Phoebe’s house, dumplings are eaten with chopsticks; and at Leo’s house, pasta is twirled on forks. Mama wants to invite her friends to dinner, too, but Reshma is nervous.

Will her friends laugh at the way her family eats?