Review of Poverty, By America, by Matthew Desmond, read by Dion Graham

Audiobooks, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Poverty, By America

by Matthew Desmond
read by Dion Graham

Books on Tape, 2023. 5 hours, 40 minutes.
Review written October 3, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

First I have to apologize. I know that I grasp more details of an information-packed book like this one when I read it with my eyes instead of with my ears, because my memory is very visually oriented. But at the same time, I had this book checked out in print for months and didn’t get to it, but when I put it in my audiobook queue, it was no problem. So I’m glad I heard all that information, but I won’t be able to cite much of it in my review, since it’s not there in front of me to quote from.

This book is a study of the Why of poverty. And unfortunately, it shows the way we who are financially better off are complicit. We like buying things for lower prices, never mind if it means that workers are exploited. And then there are zoning laws that keep multi-family housing out of upscale neighborhoods because the current residents don’t want to mix with the poor.

There are many more things pointed out in this book. Did you know that when you look at tax breaks, the well-off get vastly more government assistance than those below the poverty line? Things like the Mortgage Interest Deduction give more benefit to those who purchase a large home, and nothing to those who can’t afford a mortgage. (I know that after my Dad gave me a down payment for my condo, my cost of housing went down, helped by that tax deduction. But I never ever could have saved up for the down payment, because I was only getting further in debt every year. All that changed after the gift from my Dad.)

Another aspect is that on its face, the Earned Income Credit helps the working poor. But you can also think of it as subsidizing employers who offer low wages. All told, there are many, many factors keeping the poor at a disadvantage, and this book explores many I’d never thought about before, along with some I had.

But he also challenges the reader to look at the ways you benefit from the exploitation of the poor, and see what you can do to mitigate that. Don’t buy from companies that exploit their workers, for example. Look into the zoning laws in your neighborhood, for another. Support laws and politicians (on both sides of the political spectrum) that seek to benefit the least of these.

I did jot down some quotations I liked from the last chapter, knowing I wouldn’t remember them any other way. He was talking about the opposite of using the “Scarcity Diversion” to keep from implementing programs to help reduce poverty. He said we have an “Economy of Abundance” and a “profusion of resources.” Why do we treat scarcity as a given? And here’s a quotation I especially liked:

Wealth means having enough to share.

So if you want a book that will open your eyes to many injustices, as well as challenging you to see how you can help, pick up this book. It will certainly make you think.

matthewdesmondbooks.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Death at Morning House, by Maureen Johnson, read by Katherine Littrell

Contemporary, Mystery, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Death at Morning House

by Maureen Johnson
read by Katherine Littrell

HarperTeen, 2024. 9 hours, 23 minutes.
Review written October 28, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I believe that in reading this book, I’ve caught up on all the Maureen-Johnson-authored murder mysteries. And they’re good! As you can tell from her guidebook for adults, Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, she knows the conventions of the great mystery novels and how to use them to create something modern and new.

Death at Morning House is a stand-alone murder mystery, not part of the Stevie Bell Truly Devious series, but like those books, there’s a place where mysterious deaths happened almost a hundred years ago – and there’s a more recent death – and then someone goes missing in the novel’s present day. We do get the story of the old deaths slowly revealed, and our teen protagonist Marlowe Wexler discovers clues to the modern-day deaths. And yes, finding those clues puts Marlowe in great danger – in this book, before she even knows who’s responsible.

As the book opens, it’s the start of summer, and Marlowe is taking the girl she’s long had a crush on to her aunt and uncle’s cabin – a place Marlowe is paid to watch over in their absence. Marlowe had gotten a special scented candle in a scent her crush likes – and while they are kissing, the candle explodes and the house sustains serious fire damage.

Marlowe does not respond well. She’s afraid to talk to her crush. She becomes famous in her small town as a pyromaniac (even though the police confirm it was an accident), and she decides the only way to cope is to mope around in bed.

But then her history teacher tells Marlowe about an opportunity to spend the summer on an island in the St. Lawrence River, part of a team of teens offering tours of a historic home there. It sounds like a great way to get out of town, but the teacher doesn’t tell Marlowe that the reason there’s an opening is that one of the local teens who was planning to be there recently died at a party after prom. And part of the history of the house is the two children who died there from the original family that owned the house.

It all adds up to a great story with interesting characters and a strong sense of place. And of course, a big storm comes in not long after someone new goes missing, so there’s no way to get off the island for help if anything bad should happen.

I have to say that I am completely on board with Maureen Johnson’s recent trend of writing mysteries. She’s good! The situations and characters are varied, but there’s always an intriguing puzzle and characters you enjoy spending time with – and hope will stay alive.

maureenjohnsonbooks.com

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Review of Ernö Rubik and His Magic Cube, written by Kerry Aradhya, illustrated by Kara Kramer

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Ernö Rubik and His Magic Cube

written by Kerry Aradhya
illustrated by Kara Kramer

Peachtree, 2024. 36 pages.
Review written October 30, 2024, from my own copy, sent by the publisher.
Starred Review

Ernö Rubik and His Magic Cube is a picture book biography of the man who invented the Rubik’s Cube, especially focusing on the process that went into the invention.

I love the way the art in this book uses lots of squares and other geometric shapes, and the bright colors that show up on the cube.

Ernö grew up in Budapest, Hungary, and loved puzzles right from the start. The book shows him playing with tangrams, pentonimoes (shapes of five squares stuck together), and pentacubes (shapes of five cubes stuck together).

The book shows that later, as a teacher, he made three-dimensional models to teach his students. And then he wondered:

Would it be possible to build a big cube out of smaller cubes that moved around each other and stayed connected?

He decided to try it!

The book shows some of the things he tried first – for example, a four-by-four cube held together with paperclips and rubber bands. After he switched to twenty-seven cubes with nine on each face of the big cube, it took him days of thinking – and then a walk by a river gave him the thought of putting a round object in the center and getting the other twenty-six cubes to flow around it. (I love the way the illustrator portrays him walking around with a cube-shaped head as he was thinking about it!)

Once he figured it out, he put colors on the cubes’ surfaces and started playing with it. And that was when he discovered he had a puzzle. He was the first person who had to figure out how to solve it.

At the time the book was printed, more than 450 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold worldwide. I remember when the phenomenon started – when I was just out of college – and I love that it’s still a wildly popular toy. In fact, last year, my niece showed me that she’d learned how to solve them. So this book about their inventor is all the more relevant to kids.

kerryaradhya.com
karakramer.com
PeachtreeBooks.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 7, by Beth Brower

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion

Volume 7

by Beth Brower

Rhydon Press, 2023. 302 pages.
Review written August 27, 2024, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

Alas! I’ve read all the volumes of Emma M. Lion’s Unselected Journals currently available, so now I will have to wait for Beth Brower to write more. On her website, she says she’s treating this series like a television series with successive seasons (a year’s worth of journals), and there are a few more seasons to go. You’ll notice the volumes are getting longer. When I picked up the first one, it was a quick read, so I thought nothing of quickly consuming the first few volumes. Now there are more pages, which I’m glad of, because I’m well and truly hooked, and I like spending more time in Emma’s world.

For those I haven’t yet convinced to give these books a try, yes, you should read them, and also yes, you should start at the beginning. I’ll just give tidbits from this volume to let you know I continue to be enthralled with Emma, her friends, and the other quirky characters she encounters.

I’ve mentioned that I appreciate the friendship portrayed between Emma and three very different single gentlemen. By this volume, Emma and one of them are considering whether they should dare pursue a relationship. But at the same time, something accidentally happens to potentially cause a scandal involving Emma and another of them. One must consider appearances in 1884 London!

Emma is also still trying to make her Aunt Eugenia believe she has a strict chaperone, and she prepares to help Aunt Eugenia’s daughter, the beautiful Arabella, find the most suitable partner of Aunt Eugenia’s choosing during the upcoming Season. All while Emma is trying to ward off the man whom Aunt Eugenia will then allow to marry Emma.

It’s all told with lots of humor and wit, a big dose of mysterious secrets, and with the gossips of St. Crispian’s beginning to take note. Emma came of age in the last volume, but can she indeed keep her independence? The back of the book promises the next volume “soon,” and it had just better be true!

[Update: Volume 8 is promised in December 2024! Hooray!]

bethbrower.com

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Review of The Dictionary Story, by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston

Delightfully Silly, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

The Dictionary Story

by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston

Candlewick Press, 2024.
Review written October 18, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is probably the first picture book I’m recommending for the sake of the parents, not so much the kids.

Sure, the story for the kids is fun – we’ve got a dictionary that’s jealous of all the other books that have stories inside. So she decides to bring some words to life, and an alligator gets loose and starts going after a donut, which doesn’t want to be eaten, so they start racing through the pages and causing chaos. It’s got Oliver Jeffers’ zany illustrations and silly straight-faced sense of humor.

The illustrations show the characters frolicking through a standard dictionary’s pages – or so I thought until I paused to read the fine print. And that’s when the true brilliance of the book hit me.

I started with the “How to Use This Dictionary” page pictured toward the beginning, was enjoying its quirkiness and noticed that the editors are “Woliver Effers & Jam Spinston.” Then I had to read every single visible entry. (The endpapers are filled with definitions, and there’s also a column of them running along the bottom of most pages.) This meant that it took me much longer to read this book than an ordinary picture book, but I also gained lots of laughter.

I’ll list some of the quirkier definitions:

ajar – A word to describe something as slightly open. Not to be confused with a jar (which works best when mostly closed).

author – The writer of a book, poem or news. They move tiny black marks around (see letters) to discover what interesting shapes they can make in people’s heads (see stories). Sometimes this results in writers being paid. (See good times, donuts and coffee.)

dream – A word for things people see while asleep. Dreams are the brain’s way of showing you that you’re a lot more imaginative than you think. In the day, we fill our heads with sensible things, but dreams prefer to create strange images, such as glow-in-the-dark marmalade and inflatable chicken’s teeth. Some dreams happen when we are awake: Martin Luther King Jr. had a great one. We’ve been studying dreams for ages, and we still don’t really know what they are.

hippopotamus – A very large mammal with short legs that lives near water in Africa. Hippopotamuses are vegetarian. Their idea of a good time is not wearing clothes, floating in water and wallowing in mud. (See spa.)

minnow – A very small freshwater fish that lives in rivers, streams and sometimes lakes. They feed on insects, among other things, and often dream about a time when they will rule all known galaxies.

tall – Above the average height. Which can get quite complicated because a tall turkey is tiny in comparison to a tiny tiger, and a tall tiger is tiny compared to Thailand.

zero – Zero is a word that means nothing. Nothing is a word that means nothing. Even though zero is a different word for nothing, both mean nothing. This definition has just told you nothing.

And here are some excerpts that are especially delightful and completely won my heart:

words – Even though they are small, they are great at making the inside of your head big.

library – Libraries are a bit like forests; they are enchanted places to get lost in.

story – Books carry stories around until someone like you finds them a home in their imagination.

May you find a home for this story in your imagination.

oliverjeffers.com
samwinston.com

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Review of A Drop of Venom, by Sajni Patel

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Drop of Venom

by Sajni Patel

Rick Riordan Presents (Disney/Hyperion), 2024. 393 pages.
Review written October 26, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Here’s the idea behind this book: What if Medusa’s wrath was justified? The story is told by the victors, after all. A Drop of Venom combines the idea of Medusa with Indian mythology to give us one of the Nagin people with an affinity for snakes.

We’ve got two protagonists throughout the book. One is Manisha, a girl who when she was small was sent away from her family for her own protection when her family’s home was attacked. Manisha was sent to the temple, to hide her origins and become a temple priestess. There she meets our other protagonist, the king’s slayer, Pratyush.

Pratyush is the last in a line of supernatural monster slayers. His father and mother lived in hiding from the king, but when the king’s soldiers found them, a monster killed him. They took Pratyush to the king, and he had to slay monsters in order for his sister to be cared for. But after his sister got married off to a noble who abused her, and she eventually died, Pratyush has lost enthusiasm for killing for the king. He wants to settle down and marry that beautiful priestess he’s been flirting with at the temple. The king agrees, if he brings back the head of one last monster, the Serpent Queen who’s been turning men into stone.

What Pratyush doesn’t know was that while he was gone, Manisha was raped by a powerful man and kicked off the temple mountain in the clouds. But she didn’t die. In fact, a pit of vipers cushioned her fall, and the snakes gave her magical powers. She has a golden snake familiar that keeps growing bigger and bigger, and she’s traveling south to find her family. But she encounters people along the way, and some of them are very bad, and Manisha now has power to fight back.

There is violence in this book, and some horrible deaths. But for the most part, it’s a book about the powerless fighting back against injustice.

The book is atmospheric and pulls you along with each character. Unfortunately or fortunately (there will be more!), the story is not finished with this book, though we do have a face-off between the supposed monster and the slayer.

This is a fantasy story with many overtones about justice and power. It felt good to watch Manisha coming into her power.

sajnipatel.com
RickRiordan.com
HyperionTeens.com

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Review of We Are Big Time, written by Hena Khan, illustrated by Safiya Zerrougui

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Graphic Novel 0

We Are Big Time

written by Hena Khan
illustrated by Safiya Zerrougui

Alfred A. Knopf, 2024. 233 pages.
Review written October 9, 2024, from a library book.

This graphic novel opens as Aliyah and her family are moving from Tampa to Milwaukee, to be near her grandparents. Aliyah’s not happy about it. She misses the beaches, her school, her friends, her neighborhood, the sunshine, and her basketball team.

In Milwaukee, everything is bigger – bigger house, a bigger job for her dad, and a bigger family with their grandparents and other relatives. But it makes Aliyah feel small.

And it turns out that her school is bigger, too. It’s a private Muslim school, Peace Academy. And they have a girls’ basketball team! Historically, though, they’ve always been pretty bad.

From there, this becomes a classic sports graphic novel. The school has hired a new coach who’s not Muslim but has great basketball skills. Aliyah’s named as co-captain, even though she’s a Freshman new to the school, and she has a lot of self-doubt.

But something interesting about this team is that all the girls wear a hijab. Their uniforms cover their arms and legs. And that seems to be what other people pay attention to.

So when they start turning things around and winning ball games, they get some media attention – and they seem surprised that Muslim families are supportive of their girls playing basketball, and that the girls can play just fine with longer uniforms and head scarves.

This graphic novel gets you cheering for these girls, who learn to work together as a team, represent their community, and have a whole lot of fun.

henakhan.com
safiyaz.com
rhcbooks.com

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Review of A Well-Trained Wife, by Tia Levings

Biography, Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

A Well-Trained Wife

My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

by Tia Levings

St. Martin’s Press, 2024. 289 pages.
Review written October 18, 2024, from my own copy, purchased from Amazon.com
Starred Review

A Well-Trained Wife is a memoir from Tia Levings about her life in Christian fundamentalism, her abusive marriage, and how she finally got the courage to leave. Here’s an excerpt from the Prologue:

Allan screamed every night at the demons in the walls. He clutched at my neck as often as he tore his hair seeing those fiery red eyes. He swore he’d kill me. Or he’d take the kids “forever.” Finally, I begged him to see a doctor. I called him “unwell,” too afraid to call it insanity.

The church called Allan’s demons spiritual warfare. Seeing demons pointed to spiritual truth, not illness. Allan didn’t need medicine – I needed correction. They told me to submit more. Go to church more. And anyway, Allan refused doctors. That settled that.

And I was supposed to turn the other cheek. Divorce wasn’t allowed any more than doctors. Now, my long hair hid the scars resulting from my vows to love, honor, and obey. “Till death do us part” could mean by his hand, but who cared?

The Prologue tells us where the story is going, and then Tia’s story shows us how she got there. She starts out with her background in a fundamentalist church and her earnest desire to please God – as well as the boy her friend introduced her to who tried to molest her. And then guilt for that, and plenty of teaching about how a woman’s role is to get married and please her husband and have his babies. One of her best friends in high school was a guy she was afraid was gay – and believed that meant he’d go to hell if it were true.

And then she meets Allan. He is also looking for the woman God has for him. And he moves quickly. Tia relates their story with all the red flags that she didn’t realize were red flags at the time. They get married and get involved in increasingly more conservative churches. Both of them get discipled by people who tell them that Allan needs to be the one in control – complete with “disciplining” Tia and not letting her post anything online he hasn’t approved.

Tia’s story includes five kids and the excruciating story of an infant who gets heart surgery – and then passes away when only nine weeks old. Through it all, her husband is controlling and abusive – and Tia keeps thinking that if she does better, is more obedient, more pleasant, she can change things for them.

Until finally she realizes her life and her children’s lives are in danger, and she escapes in the night.

Tia Levings tells her story well. There’s lots of detail so we understand where she is coming from, and she speaks with compassion for her past self who went through so much and just wanted to please God. She talks about the many lifelines who helped her gain perspective, helped her even think about leaving, and helped her get her feet on the ground after she did leave.

I like these words of perspective in one of the later chapters:

But that’s the thing about puritanical high-control religion. All those God-rules had numbed the entire human experience. The good and the bad, the joy and the pain. The rules said there wasn’t more and I was wrong to thirst for it. Now here was reality, offering me drink.

And of course the book makes me reflect. Because I grew up in a conservative Christian home. I have described it before as not as extreme as those who were home schooled and deep into Bill Gothard’s teachings. We weren’t as extreme as what she describes here.

But then I think, hold on, the only reason my parents weren’t as extreme is that the churches they attended weren’t quite that extreme. But I attended Bill Gothard’s “Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts” many times. I think the only reason we didn’t go to the Advanced seminar (and maybe my oldest brother did?) was that it wasn’t happening nearby, and we’d never pay for plane flights.

I was third of thirteen children. We went to church twice on Sundays and on Wednesday nights as well. We went to Christian schools. Or at least we older kids did – the later kids were homeschooled. I went to a Christian university and married a young man I met there who had his own notebook from Bill Gothard’s Advanced Seminar.

I’ve long told myself that we had a good marriage for many years – until my husband let chronic resentment get in and had an affair and left me. But this book made me wonder how much I was fooling myself. I had wanted to be a stay-at-home Mom, but we couldn’t afford that and I worked part-time for most of the time we were married – and felt a little resentful about that. I happily followed his job around the country and the world – but I wonder if there would have been a better way to approach it. And of course, I knew absolutely nothing about sex when I got married. I always thought it was beautiful to learn together – but well, this book made me think more about those kids hurrying into marriage and thinking they knew “God’s right way” to do things. I’m just not sure I was any more clear-eyed than Tia was.

All that is to say that this book is compelling and well-written. And it made me think about what makes a good marriage – and that it’s perhaps not as clear-cut as my pastors used to try to make me believe.

I love this statement on the very last page:

I have a new spiritual practice now. One that is fluid and deeply private. There are no gurus or holy books of rules. My mycorrhizal network underground communicates through poetry, gratitude, compassion, reality, and supreme love. I’m a tree rooted to the deep with arms reaching for the sky. I’m a woman. A mother writer artist hiker friend, but more than any role. I am not half of another. Nor the completion of their aching soul. I don’t owe anyone my body or service. Training is for dogs. I’m a human soul on a journey home and I belong to me.

That makes me believe that Tia Levings is going to go on to live a good and joyful life. Not a perfect one, but a rich and lovely one, with plenty of joys and sorrows. And I believe that I am doing so, too.

Thank you for sharing your story, Tia! Here’s to a life free of rules but full of love and joy.

tialevings.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Unbecoming, by Seema Yasmin

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Unbecoming

by Seema Yasmin

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024. 352 pages.
Review written October 21, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Unbecoming is just barely speculative fiction – may it continue to be speculative! It’s about a near-future United States where abortion is illegal, and so is any and all type of hormonal pill. So birth control pills are illegal, as is hormone replacement therapy and IVF.

Our two teen protagonists, Laylah and Noor, are seniors in high school living in Texas in a Muslim community. Laylah is active with the mosque youth group, but Noor has been staying away for a couple years. They are working together to write an online website called “A Texas Teen’s Guide to Safe Abortion.”

But as the book opens, Laylah is in a sketchy mobile clinic disguised as a taco truck – and learns that she is pregnant.

This does not fit with her plans to go to medical school and become a doctor. She would like to take the abortion pill within 70 days since her last period – the time when it’s effective – but that clinic is out of them and says they’re impossible to find in Texas.

So the book is about Laylah trying to pretend nothing is wrong and that she’s researching for the Guide – but trying to find a way to get the abortion pill before she runs out of time. Her adventures include a couple of dangerous scenarios, and the clock is ticking the whole time. (If she has to get a surgical abortion, she’s told she’ll have to go to Mexico.)

Meanwhile, Noor is working to become an investigative journalist, and she’s convinced the wife of the iman and leader of the mosque’s youth group is up to something shady with mosque funds. But she doesn’t want to tell Laylah, because Laylah trusts the woman. And on top of this there are family expectations, not to mention the expectations of all the ladies in their community. So both Laylah and Noor have secrets from each other and feel guilty about it.

This is a good book to read before the election – may it never come true!

Now, if you believe abortion is murder (as I once did), this might be hard to read. Laylah doesn’t give a thought to the beginning life inside her and can be taken as an example of someone who forgot to use birth control and now is paying the price. (It didn’t help that the birth control pill is illegal, but her partner didn’t use a condom, either, and she’s kicking herself.)

But hold on. Even if you believe that, this book illustrates the exact thing that made me stop being a one-issue voter about abortion. Why would banning abortion work any better than Prohibition did? If you pass a law that the majority do not feel is right – it’s going to become a matter of pride and virtue to help people get around that law. All the mobile clinics, including the sketchy ones, the teen guide – you’d better believe a whole network would rise up to subvert the law. It would end up being only the people with the most resources and connections who could find safe treatment, but definitely a movement would rise up.

Either way, you’re going to have sympathy for a teen who made one bad decision, knows she did, and now must deal with the consequences. Seema Yasmin tells a good story about interesting characters. Oh, and there’s a historical story in this book about her grandmother in India who almost got involuntarily sterilized by her government in the 1970s. (I had no idea that happened.) Controlling people’s reproductivity has a long history.

This book gives you a good story, but it also makes you think.

seemayasmin.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Fabulous Fannie Farmer, by Emma Bland Smith, pictures by Susan Reagan

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Fabulous Fannie Farmer

Kitchen Scientist and America’s Cook

by Emma Bland Smith
pictures by Susan Reagan

Calkins Creek (Astra Books for Young Readers), 2024. 40 pages.
Review written October 18, 2024, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

The Fabulous Fannie Farmer is, yes, about the writer of cookbooks. What I didn’t know is that she was the one whose cookbook – first published in 1896 – established using standard measurements in cookbooks.

Here’s how the author puts it, talking about Fannie’s childhood:

If Fannie had asked, “How much salt should I put in this soup?” her mother might have answered, “Oh, a goodly amount.”

The reply to “And how much butter?” might have been “The size of a chicken’s egg.”

“How long should I cook it?”

“Why, till it’s done, of course!”

Women weren’t supposed to need exact measurements and instructions – cooking was all about feminine instincts, after all!

The book tells about Fannie’s life, her setback of being laid up for years because of polio, and her eventually finding a place at the Boston Cooking School, first as a student, then as an assistant, and eventually as the principal.

As a teacher at the Boston Cooking School, she continued to perfect her skills and learned – and taught – about the science behind cooking food. She eventually took on the project of rewriting the school cookbook, testing every recipe until she reached perfection.

A fun twist is that the publisher didn’t believe it would sell many copies, so they required Fannie to pay the cost of printing. She agreed, for most of the profits – which ended up being a great deal for her, as editions of the book are still in print more than a hundred years later.

Cookbooks have never been the same.

Here’s what the author says when she tells about Fannie enrolling in the Boston Cooking School:

Let us take a moment to be grateful. If she hadn’t enrolled, we might all still be tossing in carefree pinches of baking powder and crossing our fingers that our Boston cream pie wouldn’t come out flat as a pancake.

Thank you, Fannie Farmer! And thank you, Emma Bland Smith and Susan Reagan, for bringing her story to life.

emmabsmith.com
susanreaganart.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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