Tomatoes for Neela

by Padma Lakshmi, Juana Martinez-Neal (Illustrator)

Overview

Padma Lakshmi, bestselling author and host of Bravo's Top Chef and Hulu's Taste the Nation, and Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator Juana Martinez-Neal team up in this celebration of food and family.
 
“Some of my fondest memories from childhood are of cooking with the women in my family. It is the foundation for all I have spent my life working on.” –Padma Lakshmi


Neela loves cooking with her amma and writing down the recipes in her notebook. It makes her feel closer to her paati who lives far away in India. On Saturdays, Neela and Amma go to the green market and today they are buying tomatoes to make Paati's famous sauce. But first, Neela needs to learn about all the different kinds of tomatoes they can pick from. And as Neela and Amma cook together, they find a way for Paati to share in both the love and the flavors of the day.

Bestselling author and host of Bravo's Top Chef and Hulu's Taste the Nation Padma Lakshmi takes young readers on an intergenerational journey full of delicious flavors and fun food facts that celebrates a family's treasured recipes. And Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator Juana Martinez-Neal brings this circle of women to life with vivid detail and warmth. Tomatoes for Neela lovingly affirms how we can connect to other cultures, as well as to our own, through food.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593202708
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	08/31/2021
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	202,116
Product dimensions:	9.80(w) x 12.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Padma Lakshmi is the creator and host of Hulu's Taste the Nation and host and executive producer of the Emmy-winning Bravo series Top Chef. She is the bestselling author of two cookbooks, the Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs, as well as her memoir Love, Loss, and What We Ate. Lakshmi is also cofounder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America, an artist ambassador for the ACLU, and a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations. She lives in New York City with her daughter. Her favorite kind of tomato is a San Marzano.

Juana Martinez-Neal is the winner of the Pura Belpré Illustrator Award for La Princesa and the Pea by Susan Middleton Elya and the Caldecott Honor Award for Alma and How She Got Her Name, which she also wrote. Originally from Lima, Peru, she lives with her husband and three children in Arizona where she cooks with lots of Roma tomatoes.

Editorial Reviews

06/21/2021

Top Chef and Taste the Nation host Lakshmi lends her expertise to this stuffed picture book, exploring how cooking can preserve both intergenerational bonds and summer’s bounty. Neela, a brown-skinned child, adores cooking with her amma, who pens recipes in a notebook passed down from Neela’s paati. On Saturdays, Neela and her amma visit the green market, “now brimming with crops from the end of summer.” After surveying lusciously painted tomatoes across two spreads, which are described in scribbled addenda (“Big like a softball. Slice them thick for toast with mayonnaise”), the duo returns home to preserve them, using a family recipe. As the story moves along, each step includes additional facts: “Did you know that ‘tomato’ comes from an old Aztec word, ‘tomatl’?” In acrylic paint and colored pencil, Caldecott Honoree Martinez-Neal contributes warmly expressive, toothsome spreads that emphasize food, family, and the natural world. While copious factual asides would serve better as back matter, the sweet, lushly illustrated tale succeeds in showing the importance of food as connection within one Indian American family. Back matter includes recipes for tomato sauce and tomato chutney, as well as tomato fun facts, resources on farmworkers, and an author’s note. Ages 3–7. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

“The sweet, lushly illustrated tale succeeds in showing the importance of food as connection within one Indian American family.” –Publishers Weekly

“Martinez-Neal’s warmly textured, beautifully detailed illustrations are the perfect celebration of intergenerational love.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Exquisite illustrations by Caldecott Honor Book author-illustrator Martinez-Neal make this title one that belongs front and center on shelves everywhere.” —Booklist

"The intergenerational warmth and pleasure in cooking together are palpable. Part informational, part family story, this attractive book will speak to young kitchen helpers and those with loved ones in far-off places.” –School Library Journal

From the Publisher

09/01/2021

K-Gr 3—Cookbook author and television host Lakshmi celebrates the connection a child feels with her mother and grandmother through the process of making tomato sauce. Neela's paati lives in India, but her presence is felt, from her portrait on the wall, to her collection of recipes that will one day be Neela's, to the taste of the sauce itself. At the green market and back home in the kitchen, Neela's mother teaches her about the different kinds of tomatoes, the best time of year to buy them, and how tomatoes traveled from the New World to Europe. With all of the sauce canned, Neela saves one jar at the very back of the cupboard for her paati's winter visit. There isn't much of a story arc here, but the intergenerational warmth and pleasure in cooking together are palpable. The lovely illustrations, created with acrylic and colored pencil on textured paper, are delicately ornamented with salmon-pink flowers and soft, blue-green leaves that emphasize the sweetness of Neela's interactions with her mother. Back matter includes two recipes, fun tomato facts, and a note that honors farmworkers. VERDICT Part informational, part family story, this attractive book will speak to young kitchen helpers and those with loved ones in far-off places.—Jan Aldrich Solow, formerly Fairfax County P.S., VA

School Library Journal

2021-06-02
Neela loves cooking with her mother in their big, warm kitchen, where her grandmother’s portrait hangs on the wall.

On Saturday, Neela and Amma go to the green market to buy the vegetable Neela loves cooking best: tomatoes! Together, Neela and Amma make a sauce using a recipe passed down from Paati. As they cook, Neela and her mother dance to the music Amma’s bangles make when she chops vegetables and grates carrots. Amma tells Neela about how tomatoes came from Mesoamerica, where they were cultivated by the ancient Aztecs, and how Europeans initially feared they were poisonous. Now, Amma says, they’re used in cooking all over the world—including India, where Paati’s recipe comes from. As they finish the sauce and can it for the winter, Amma tells Neela about the tomato harvest and about the benefits of eating and cooking vegetables and fruits while they are in season. As they finish preserving the sauce, Neela saves a jar for Paati, who will visit in the winter. Martinez-Neal’s warmly textured, beautifully detailed illustrations are the perfect celebration of intergenerational love. Similarly, the gentle text has some lovely emotional moments. However, Lakshmi includes so much information in the narrative that it meanders, which may cause readers to lose hold of its core. Recipes for sauce and chutney, additional tomato facts, a note about farm workers, and a personal note close the book.

A digressive plot gets in the way of this celebration of female relationships. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews