SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: www.aimeelucido.com
CITY: Berkeley
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME: SATA 381
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:Brown University, B.A. (computer science); Hamline University, M.F.A. (creative writing for children and young adults).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and software engineer. Facebook, former software engineer; Uber, senior software engineer, project leader, diversity advocate, and mentor, 2015—.
AVOCATIONS:Baking, running marathons, writing crossword puzzles.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Medium and Uber Engineering.
SIDELIGHTS
Aimee Lucido is a software engineer and author of fiction for young readers. She first became interested in coding through playing video games in middle school. She sustained her interest through high school and got a programming internship with Google while in college, but to unwind after long hours of programming, she took comfort in the creative experience of writing. In between work hours—or sometimes during them, hiding her word-processing window behind the task at hand—she gradually churned out a first, never-published fiction manuscript. After graduating from college, Lucido went on to work for Facebook and later Uber. There, in addition to the expected tasks as a software engineer, she was delighted to be able to devote time to promoting women’s presence in the technology industry and mentoring junior engineers. After getting a master’s degree in creative writing, Lucido managed to publish her first middle-grade novel, Emmy in the Key of Code. In her spare time, Lucido has enjoyed performing musical improv with the group Flash Mob Musical.
The heroine of Emmy in the Key of Code is the twelve-year-old title character. With an operatic mother and pianist father with a new job in the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Emmy misses her life back in Wisconsin. She also regrets that she does not have the musical talent to follow in her parents’ footsteps, leading her to land in a coding class, where she meets new friend Abigail. While learning Java—and trying to ignore derogatory treatment from boys—Emmy comes to view writing code as much like writing music, for the satisfaction it gives her. The narrative combines the stylistics of poetry and coding to present how Emmy and Abigail reach out to others with emotional needs—especially their beloved teacher when she falls ill—and form a thriving community of their own.
A Kirkus Reviews writer admired how “typeface changes have myriad effects: showcasing software and musical terms, mirroring the way formatting helps programmers understand software, and reflecting Emmy’s emotional state.” A Publishers Weekly writer observed that the combination of textual styles “uniquely conveys the art and beauty that can be found in multiple disciplines.” The writer added that “Emmy’s desperate search for both friendship and affirmation is relatable and relevant.” In School Library Journal, Ashley Larsen praised Emmy in the Key of Code as an “ambitious … unusual … compelling story about middle schoolers struggling to forge their own identities in spite of the expectations of their families and society.”
“When I was writing [ Recipe for Disaster, ] I wanted the cast of characters that surrounded Hannah to all have different relationships to Judaism,” said Lucido in an interview on the Jewish Books for Kids … And More! website. Lucido’s 2021 work, Recipe for Disaster, features Hannah. Her best friend is Shira, but a rift forms when Shira challenges Hannah’s Jewishness at her bat mitzvah. According to Shira, Hannah is not really Jewish and therefore cannot have a bat mitzvah of her own. Shira’s comments are a reference to the fact that Hannah’s mother no longer practices Judaism herself and her father was raised Catholic. On the side, however, Hannah and her Grandma Mimi are secretly planning a bat mitzvah celebration for Hannah. Grandma puts Hannah in touch with her aunt who in turn puts Hannah in touch with a rabbi to help Hannah understand her predicament. Hannah studies the Torah and learns Hebrew in secret in preparation for her celebration as she searches for her place in the world. In the Jewish Books for Kids … And More! website interview, Lucido explained, “Ultimately, Hannah is Jewish in a different way from anyone else—every Jewish person is!—and the only way that Hannah is ever going to feel confident in who she is as a Jew is if she ignores the other voices around her, and decides what Judaism means to her.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called Recipe for Disaster a “sincere story about family, Judaism, and finding oneself.” “Food, family, friendships, and Jewish identity are the focus of this moving coming-of-age story,” concluded Kacy Helwick in her review of the work in School Library Journal.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2019, review of Emmy in the Key of Code; August 1, 2021, review of Recipe for Disaster.
Publishers Weekly, June 3, 2019, review of Emmy in the Key of Code, p. 62.
School Library Journal, August, 2019, Ashley Larsen, review of Emmy in the Key of Code, p. 68; September, 2021, Kacy Helwick, review of Recipe for Disaster, p. 90.
ONLINE
Aimee Lucido website, https://aimeelucido.com (September 19, 2019).
Curiosity Quills Press website, https://curiosityquills.com/ (March 13, 2017), Alisa Gus, author interview.
Jewish Books for Kids … And More!, https://jewishbooksforkids.com/ (September 1, 2021), author interview.
Wogrammer, https://wogrammer.org/ (February 27, 2019), “The Art of Code and the Code in Art: How Aimee Lucido Blends Code, Music and Writing to Tell Her Story.”
Writes With, https://writeswith.com/ (February 14, 2022), author interview.*
I never thought I’d be an author. In fact, if you’d asked a five-year-old me, living in Richmond, Virginia with her parents and little sister, what she wanted to be when she grew up, she wouldn’t have been able to give you a single answer. It would have been some hybrid non-job, a professional chimera of sorts, part artist, part horseback rider, part musician, part office worker, part chef. All I knew at that stage in life was that I was interested in everything and I hated being bored.
If you had asked teenage me, living in Chicago, Illinois, the child of two MBA-trained parents, what she wanted to be when she grew up, her answer would have been a bit more practical. “I dunno, something with business,” I had been known to say, accompanied by an adolescent shrug and a cliché of an eyeroll.
In college, faced with the prospect of choosing a major, (or, “concentration” as my fellow students at Brown University would remind me) I would be forced to pick a lane. And since I had long abandoned my dreams of someday becoming a sculptor-equestrian-floutist-accountant-culinary artist, I chose a path that seemed practical and interesting at the time: computer science.
I threw myself into computer science whole-heartedly, nearly finishing the major by the end of my junior year, along with a half dozen TA positions, an internship each at Google and Facebook, and with a lucrative job offer waiting for me in San Francisco when I graduated, as an Android engineer at Facebook.
But I supposed I never fully evicted that five-year-old from my psyche. The one who wanted to be everything. An artist, a horseback rider, a musician, an office worker, a chef… and an author, apparently.
I had always loved words: big words, funny words, word games, word puzzles, alphabet soup, you name it. And as a freshman in college I (almost by accident) became a crossword constructor, too, publishing my first crossword in Brown’s puzzle week in the New York Times. And by the time I was a junior in college, I formalized that love of words by declaring a second concentration in literary arts, simply because I had taken so many of the required classes already, just for fun, that I figured I may as well receive a degree for it.
I even started writing a book.
It was the summer I was working at Google, and for some reason they didn’t have much work for me to do, so, as a respite from playing pool and eating five meals a day in Google’s myriad cafeteria, I began to draft my magnum opus. It was a YA dystopian novel called The Frozen City that was nearly 100,000 words, began with a prologue that was also a dream sequence and a flashback, and I spent three years revising it and querying it before realizing that maaaaybe I needed some help if I was going to actually do this author thing for real. Maybe I needed to get an MFA.
I was working at Uber by this point, still as an Android engineer, but I enrolled in Hamline University’s low-residency MFA program in writing for children and young adults in order to hone my writing craft, and that’s where I began writing the book that would eventually become EMMY IN THE KEY OF CODE.
Now, I live in that in-between.
I love in that in-between.
EMMY IN THE KEY OF CODE (Kirkus star recipient, Nerdy Book Award winner, Northern California Book Award winner, Carnegie Medal nominee) is a story about a girl not sure if she’s more musician or more computer scientist. It’s told in a hybrid of code and poetry, as if it’s not quite sure what it wants to be, and RECIPE FOR DISASTER (Versify, September 14, 2021) is a story about a girl not sure if she really counts as Jewish, also told in a hybrid manner, this time between poetry, prose, and recipes.
And here I am, a thirty-year-old woman, who hates being bored, who is somehow trusted to maintain a career, a home, a marriage, and the life of a one-year-old mini golden doodle, but still isn’t quite sure what she wants to be when she grows up. I know it includes books, I know it includes kids, I know it includes crossword puzzles (now, somehow, I make nearly 30 a year, and I’m published everywhere from The New York Times to The New Yorker, to the Crosswords With Friends app, to acclaimed indie publishers such as The AVCX), and I know it includes talking about how my life sits in this strange middle zone, not quite sure what it wants to be.
I hope when you read my books you’ll get a peek into my brain. You’ll learn about how “or” in computer science always includes “and” and how you’re Jewish enough if you feel Jewish enough.
Maybe you’ll join me in the in-between.
SHORT BIO:
Aimee Lucido is the author of the middle grade novels EMMY IN THE KEY OF CODE and RECIPE FOR DISASTER, as well as the brand-new picture book PASTA PASTA LOTSA PASTA, chapter book, LUCKY PENNY, and the upcoming middle grade novel WORDS APART. She got her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Hamline University and she lives with her husband, her daughter, and her dog in Irvington, NY. When she’s not writing books, Aimee writes and edits trivia and crossword puzzles, which are often published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Scientific American, and AVCX, among many others.
aimeelucido.com
Twitter: @AimeeLucido
Instagram: @AimeeLucido
Interview With Aimee Lucido (Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta)
July 2, 2024No Comments
Written by Cherokee Crum, Staff Reviewer
Posted in Authors, Interviews, News & Updates
Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Aimee Lucido (Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta)!
Meet the Author: Aimee Lucido
Aimee Lucido is the author of several books for kids, including Emmy in the Key of Code, Recipe for Disaster, and Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta. She got her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Hamline University and lives with her family in Berkeley, California, where she likes to do trivia, run, and write crossword puzzles.
Mavisu Demirag is an artist living in Izmir, Turkey. She graduated from Dokuz Eylul University with a degree in fashion design, but later turned her sights to her true passion: illustration. She is the illustrator of picture books including Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta by Aimee Lucido and many books published in Turkey and internationally.
About the Book: Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta
A family dinner gets out of hand as guest after guest arrives with a different pasta request in this rambunctious rhyming picture book. How much pasta is too much pasta?
Ring-a-ding, the doorbell rings, and oh! What did my Nonna bring?
Nonna Ana from Catania only likes to eat lasagna. But Nonno Titi from Tahiti only eats his spaghettini! Zio Tony wants ravioli, Zia Trini wants rotini, the cugini want tortellini… Family dinners can be tricky when the guests are oh-so-picky! As the kitchen gets more and more chaotic, can family pasta night go off without a hitch?
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
This book came out of a single conversation that happened in a Facebook group with my MFA cohort. One of my friends (Barbara Roberts! You should read her books!) had posted a picture of a table of Italian food and asked if we thought kids might be interested in a book called Ode to an Italian Lunch. This conversation rapidly devolved into me riffing rhymes on different pasta names–Roly poly holy moly ravioli! Teeny weeny bucatini, pasta pasta yum rotini! Hokey pokey naughty gnocchi slippy slidy artichoke-y! I kept noodling (pun intended) on this idea for weeks and months and years and after many (many!) rounds of revisions, PASTA PASTA LOTSA PASTA was born!
YABC: Who is your favorite character in the book?
My favorite character would have to be the parrot Pokey, who only eats gnocchi, because it makes me laugh that a parrot would eat pasta at all, and then also have a very specific preference about it. And then when Mavisu illustrated Pokey, I loved him even more, because of his weird obsession with the redheaded girl’s braids. He’s such a troublemaker! I adore him!
YABC: What’s a book you’ve recently read and loved?
Lisa Riddiough’s PIE RATS is absolutely *delicious* if you like rhyming, food-themed picture books. It’s hilarious, so well-written, and it’s wonderfully illustrated, too. But don’t read it if you’re hungry! You may eat the pages.
In the middle grade space, I thought Kate O’Shaughnessy’s latest book, THE WRONG WAY HOME, was absolutely beautiful and such a page-turner. There’s a fabulous sense of family and setting in the story, and I highly recommend it.
YABC: What’s up next for you?
I am taking PASTA on the road this summer!
June 27th: Worldwide PASTA launch at Books of Wonder in New York, New York
July 9th: West Coast PASTA launch at Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley, CA
July 10th: Read-aloud at Ruby’s in Sacramento, CA with Lisa Riddiough
July 13th: Midwest PASTA launch at Red Balloon in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Check out my website for more details about these events. And, if you can’t make it to these locations in-person, never fear! You can reach out to me at me@aimeelucido.com in order to set up an in-person or virtual event for you and your community.
YABC: What is the main message or lesson you would like your reader to remember from this book?
I want people to walk away from this book laughing and wanting to read it again, only this time, faster!
YABC: How does one become a puzzle designer professionally?
I fell into puzzle-making completely by accident. I had always been a fan of puzzles in any form–jigsaw, crossword, sudokus, you name it–and when I was at Brown University for undergrad, by sheer luck I became friends with a handful of people who had connections to crossword puzzles. Some solved them competitively, some had been published by the New York Times, and a few had even interned for Will Shortz (the New York Times crossword editor). I was totally star-struck!
We decided it would be fun to make a week of New York Times crosswords all by Brown students, and when we got Will Shortz on board with this idea, I figured this was my chance to learn how to make a crossword. So I roped a friend into teaching me how to construct a crossword while we were supposed to be studying for our philosophy final, and the puzzle we made was good enough for the New York Times! That was my debut, and the process of making it was so fun that it gave me the bug to make more. I was lucky enough to be mentored by excellent people in the puzzling community, and every time I got a puzzle published, someone would reach out to me with an invitation to publish a puzzle in a different venue. Before long, I had a handful of recurring gigs that grew and grew every year I was pursuing them.
Now, I’ve been making crosswords professionally for over a decade, and last year I made more than 100 crosswords for a variety of publications–the New York Times, the New Yorker, indie publications such as the AVCX, alumni newspapers, and even a few standalone books. I take commissions, too, so I also make crosswords for things like weddings and anniversaries. I’ve even made puzzles for a few marriage proposals! It’s a ton of fun and I’m so fortunate that I get to do it professionally.
YABC: How does your love of puzzles and trivia influence your writing?
When I’m making a puzzle (whether it’s a trivia puzzle or a crossword puzzle or something else), I need to think about how the solver is going to solve it. So I write very specific clues and try to imagine how the solver will work their way in to get the final solution. If the puzzle is too hard, it won’t be fun to solve. If it’s too easy, they don’t have the beauty of an “aha!” moment. So I have to thread the needle perfectly and always put myself in the solver’s shoes.
I think writing a book is exactly the same. When I’m writing a book, I want to make sure I know exactly how my reader is going to figure out every little bit of important information. Am I saying it outright, or am I making them work for it? If I’m being too confusing then the book will be hard to read, but I want to make sure there is a beautiful “aha!” moment when you reach the climax of the story, or when you learn an important kernel of information about a character. I have to switch back and forth between writer-brain and reader-brain when I write a book, just like I switch back and forth between maker-brain and solver-brain when I make a puzzle. In both cases, I want the final work to be just as much fun to consume as it was to create.
YABC: What advice do you have for new writers?
My advice changes every time I’m asked this question because I tend to give the advice that I need at any given moment. So right now, my advice is to let yourself *play* with words. Have fun with the writing because I swear it will show up on the reader’s side. Books that were fun to write are often fun to read, too
Title: Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta
Author: Aimee Lucido
Illustrator: Mavisu Demirag
Release Date: July 2, 2024
Publisher: Beach Lane Books
The Pastabilities Are Endless: Q&A with Aimee Lucido About Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta
May 14, 2024 by Betsy Bird Leave a Comment
Lest we be unclear, I’m no picture book pushover. You think you’ve got a bouncy, fun picture book ideal for large storytimes (and with a natural food tie-in to boot)? I dunno, man. Rhymes, after all, are tricky things and writing an expert rhyming book can sometimes be a struggle. Maybe that’s why I was so floored by Aimee Lucido’s awesome Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta. So much so that I even wrote out my own description for it. Here, check it out:
“Incredible, bouncy cooking energy infuses this delightful tale of a girl and her pasta loving family. Guaranteed to make you hungry! Surely SURELY this cannot be the first pasta-related picture book to realize the rhyming potential of Italian foodstuffs. And yet, I say that I can’t come up with anything to compare to this. It has all the rhythm and bouncy energy of Bee-bim Bop (and that’s the highest compliment I can bestow). We always need books that would work well in a storytime. This book earns your respect. I think we just found a readaloud winner!”
Want to know more? I sure did. So I got a chance to talk to Aimee all about it:
Betsy Bird: Aimee! Such a delight to speak with you today. PASTA PASTA LOTSA PASTA is a readaloud storytime dream of a book. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of any other picture book that so completely takes advantage of the internal rhymes inherent in Italian pasta ingredients and I’ve been coming up blank. Where did this book originate for you?
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Aimee Lucido
Aimee Lucido: Hi! I’m so excited to be talking to you about PASTA today! I’m absolutely thrilled that you are enjoying it as a readaloud, because that really was the thing that kept me engaged in this story throughout the writing and revising process. The idea for this story originated from a Facebook group conversation between me and my MFA cohort back in 2016 (an eon ago). One of the people in my group (Barbara Roberts! She writes amazing books that everyone should read!) posted a picture of a table full of Italian food and asked if we thought kids might be interested in a book called “Ode to an Italian Lunch.” I was doing a lot of musical improv at the time and had been playing with improvised rhyming, so this conversation quickly turned into me writing nonsense rhymes about different pasta shapes. As goofy as the concept was, these snippets of text were so much fun to read aloud, and the rhythm was so compelling, that I started writing a draft of the book almost immediately. Nearly eight years later… PASTA is entering the world!
BB: I always like to hear about how long a book sometimes takes to percolate. Reading the rhythmic text reminds me of other bouncy rhyme-y books like Bee-bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park. But getting the rhyme scheme down perfectly in any book can be exceedingly difficult. How do you go about making these rhymes? Do you speak them out loud as you write them? Do you read them aloud to an audience of some sort?
Aimee: Bee-bim Bop! was actually the book I had in my head as a mentor text as I was writing PASTA! So it’s very cool that that came through for you. And yes, nailing a rhyme scheme in a book is certainly a challenge, but it’s one that I thoroughly enjoy. Although, if I’m being honest, I feel like I cheated a little bit in this book because so many of these rhymes are not actually perfect rhymes! And if there’s one thing people say over and over again about writing picture books it’s that the rhymes *must* be perfect. But with this book, I decided to treat it less like a picture book in its rhyme scheme and more like a song, or a tongue twister. So even more than focusing on rhyme, I focused on rhythm, the scansion of the text, and whether reading the story out loud felt good not just in my ear, but also in my mouth. So, yes, I do speak these rhymes out loud as I write them, although the only people privy to these early performances are me and my dog. Then, when I feel confident in the text, I make someone who’s never read it before read it out loud to me. If it sounds good when *they* read it out loud, that’s when I know the book is done.
BB: Kooky question, but did you have to do any pasta research yourself for the book? Which is to say, have you tried every single kind of pasta mentioned on these pages?
Aimee: I eat a *lot* of pasta, which I credit to being part Italian. My dad tells me that we actually have family in the pasta business, so I guess it’s in my blood. And yes, I have tried every style of pasta here at least once. Some are staples in our house (rotini, ravioli, lasagna, gnocchi) and some I only encounter at restaurants (spaghettini, cappellini).
BB: And now the hard hitting interview question I’m sure you’ve been fearing: What is your favorite pasta shape personally?
Aimee: Ahhh I know you’re joking, but I actually have been fearing this question because it’s SO hard to pick!!! If I had to just choose one, I’d have to say rotini because I like how it captures sauce and also I think the spiral shape is cool to look at. (Random fun fact: did you know rotini means ‘spirals’ in Italian?? Same etymological root as ‘rotate’!) So, officially, my answer to this question is rotini. But my *real* answer is that I like different pasta shapes for different dishes. I like bucatini for carbonara, and cavatappi for pesto, or creamy/cheesy dishes. I like gnocchi best with a light tomato sauce, and ravioli is my favorite when it’s topped with a browned butter and sage sauce. I could go on and on… but I’ll spare you!
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BB: It’s impossible not to love the art of Mavisu Demirag. What a find! What was your reaction on first seeing the art? Did you have a mental picture in your mind of what the book might look like when you wrote it, or not so much?
Aimee: I absolutely LOVE Mavisu’s art for this book!!! I feel so lucky that she agreed to work on this project. I am not a particularly visual person, and so I didn’t go into the process with any specific images in my head. But I knew I wanted the illustrations to be bouncy and colorful and chaotic, because that matched the energy of the text. But beyond that I was prepared to be surprised. And Mavisu’s artwork was the perfect surprise! Her art is full of character without veering into caricature, and I love the note of old-world charm in the art. It almost transports me back in time, and makes me feel like I’m in Tuscany, eating dinner in an Italian villa!
BB: Finally, will we be seeing any more rhymes from you in the future?
Aimee: While I do play a little bit with rhyme in my middle grade novels, which so far all have a verse component, PASTA is my first full book written in rhyme. But I do have more that I’m working on! Hopefully someday someone besides me and my dog will be able to hear those 🙂
I trust most of you didn’t read this on an empty stomach. If you did, my apologies, but Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta is on bookstore and library shelves everywhere July 2nd so you won’t have to wait long to satiate your appetite. Special thanks to Aimee for answering all of my questions and to Mitch Thorpe and the team at Simon & Schuster for helping to put all this together.
Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta. By Aimee Lucido. Illus. by Mavisu Demirag. July 2024. 40p. Simon & Schuster/Beach Lane, $18.99 (9781534473638). PreS-Gr. 2.
Infectious rhythm, delightfully crowded artwork, and a buoyant story about dinner time disaster make up Lucido's riotous picture book debut. A family is getting ready for dinner when Nonna Ana (from Catania) arrives, bearing a cart of fresh eggs, and they set about making lasagna, stirring the eggs into the flour, and rolling the dough out "thin as paper." Then, Nonno Titi (from Tahiti) rings the doorbell carrying a bag of zucchini, and the family starts making spaghettini. As more relatives ring the bell, the kitchen gets more and more packed with family members requiring different kinds of pasta--even the parrot, Pokey, has a discerning palette: "Pokey only eats our gnocchi." Demirag's deliciously textured, blocky digital artwork perfectly captures the jostling chaos with overlapping images of ingredients and kitchen tools, as well as aunts, uncles, cousins, several birds, and a cat, all of whom are getting hungrier. But when it's finally time to eat, could there be too much pasta? Lucido's bouncy rhyming lines are a pure joy to read aloud, and an abrupt comic turn at the end that marvelously maintains the rhyme scheme is sure to leave little ones hungry for repeat reads (and pasta). A playful pick, superb for group story time. --Sarah Hunter
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Hunter, Sarah. "Pasta Pasta Lotsa Pasta." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 19-20, 1 June 2024, p. 100. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804018393/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=62d3fc4e. Accessed 14 Sept. 2024.
Lucido, Aimee PASTA PASTA LOTSA PASTA Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (Children's None) $18.99 7, 2 ISBN: 9781534473638
Mangia! Can one ever tire of Italian food?
Introducing luscious homemade cuisine! The text is almost an aria, expressed in rollicking verse that not only extols the deliciousness of various types of pasta, but also outlines their construction (from scratch, of course). A pale-skinned child welcomes relatives who arrive one by one from wonderful places that rhyme with their names ("Nonno Tito from Tahiti only eats our spaghettini"). Then everyone creates delicacies such as ravioli, lasagna, and rotini. What a large family! What intricate preparations! What ingredients! Even the pets have their favorites. Finally, the family sits down to the bountiful feast, but Mamma accidentally drops the dishes on her way to serve them. "BASTA!" shouts a frustrated Mamma. But all's not lost. A final ring of the doorbell brings another very welcome visitor, someone who's fortunately carrying boxes containing a substitute Italian repast. Readers will eat this up. Who wouldn't love a book about yummy foods, told in such a delightfully bouncy manner? One quibble: There's no guide to help kids learn to pronounce the food names accurately. Still, the sumptuous foods--long strands of pasta, leaves of basil--pop in the digitally rendered collage illustrations, and DemiraÄ captures the busy culinary activities of this tightknit, racially diverse family.
As delectable as a book can get. Try it. You'll really like it! (Picture book. 5-8)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Lucido, Aimee: PASTA PASTA LOTSA PASTA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A791876949/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=28ec6b12. Accessed 14 Sept. 2024.