Gail Piernas-Davenport, illustrated by Marion Eldridge,
Shanté Keys and the New Year’s Peas
Albert Whitman & Company, 2007.

Ages 4-8

This delightful verse picture book is a celebration of food, culture and, of course, the New Year. Young Shanté arrives with her parents at Gran’s house for the annual New Year’s feast ready to eat black-eyed peas to bring good luck: but Gran realizes, to her horror, that she forgot to cook peas this year.  She sends Shanté to the neighbor, Miss Lee, hoping the young woman has black-eyed peas to spare, but Shanté learns that Miss Lee, who is Chinese, celebrates the New Year in February and traditionally eats crispy, fried dumplings.  Desperate to locate some peas, Shante perseveres, visiting a Scottish grocer, the proprietor of a Mexican restaurant, a Hindu friend and others, each time learning about a different New Year’s custom and inviting more people to dinner.

This fun book, with its vivid, brightly colored illustrations by Marion Eldridge and its catchy rhyme will be a hit with its intended audience of Kindergartners through third graders as well as with their younger siblings. Children of all ages will relate to the festivity of enjoying special foods on special occasions and will be pleased to learn that people of other cultures, while enjoying different foods and sometimes on different occasions, share the custom of coming together with loved ones to celebrate and share a meal. A note at the end tells of more New Year’s customs in countries that Shanté doesn’t learn about in the story.

Shanté Keys, the first book from author Gail Piernas-Davenport, will join Norah Dooley’s Everybody Cooks Rice series and Marjorie Priceman’s How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World as a fun and informative story about what and how people eat all over the world.  And when you’ve finished reading, take your kids to the kitchen and cook up some of Grandma Louise’s delicious Hoppin’ John, recipe included.