Everybody Cooks Rice

We are an interracial family, and my 3.5 year old daughter has many friends of many different ethnic backgrounds, and yet she had never commented on skin color differences until recently -- once she did, I wanted to run with it and explore the topic of diversity with her in many different ways, so she learns it is something to celebrate and not a taboo topic in any way.

A couple of friends suggested the excellent book Everybody Cooks Rice.  My daughter loves it.

It tells the story of a very diverse neighborhood where everyone has come from a different country and makes different kinds of food, and yet everybody cooks rice!

We have read the book often, at my daughter's request, and we expanded the learning by having her pick a recipe from the back of the book to make.  Each recipe mentioned in the story is listed in the back.

She chose "Great Grandmother's risi e bisi" and we made it for lunch one day.  She wasn't overly impressed, and neither was I, but it was still a fun experiment!

She also recently asked if she could eat her lunch with chopsticks like the 3.5 year old girl ("Just like me!") in the book does -- she amazed me with her instinctual chopstick skills.  She is much better at eating with chopsticks than I am!

I highly recommend this book as a way to learn and celebrate differences while also recognizing our similarities, and also as a fun way to introduce some cooking activities into your home, or as an addition to that already established tradition as it was over here.