Stir It Up

July 1, 2011

When not at school, taking cooking classes or working in her family's roti shop in Queens, Anjali, 13, dreams of becoming the Food Network's youngest chef.

When she's chosen to audition for Super Chef Kids on the Food Network, she has a chance to make her dream come true, but there's a problem. Her Trinidadian-immigrant parents want Anjali to take the Stuyvesant High School entrance exam, which happens to coincide with the audition. After they insist she drop the audition, Anjali hatches a plan with her best friend, Linc, to go to the audition instead. In her fiction debut, the author reveals a gift for creating compact, vivid character portraits, yet whenever the plot shows signs of taking off, she marches it back to the kitchen. Taking up about 20 percent of the book, the recipes (some appear in Ganeshram's cookbook of Trinidadian cuisine) are intriguing. But while enticing for foodies, most assume considerable culinary know-how. Some ingredients—callaloo leaves, fresh cassava, mixed essence—may be a hard sell for young readers and hard to locate outside cosmopolitan urban centers.

Strong on platform, the result is more fiction-seasoned cookbook than recipe-studded novel, best suited for precocious cooks open to culinary adventure. (recipes, author's note) (Fiction. 10-14)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2011

Gr 5-7-This brief offering introduces readers to the spicy, colorful island of Trinidad through Anjali Krishnan and her family in New York City. The 13-year-old balances school and helping at her family's roti shop where she is able to try out her culinary inspirations, with many recipes included. She dreams of being the youngest chef on The Food Network, and her grandmother believes she can do it. When Anjali wins a tryout for a teen cooking show, her family is thrilled. However, her dad thinks that her education should come first-the tryout is the same time as her entrance exam for prestigious Stuyvesant High School. Through a deceptive plan, she competes in the tryout. Her father is furious and forbids her to compete any further. Her grandmother wins him over and Anjali competes in the finals. While she does not win, her family comes to support her and her dream. This thin story contains primarily stock characters (devoted but headstrong daughter, sympathetic grandma, distracted mother, restrictive father, complicit friends). The character development is strongest between Anjali and her grandmother; however, the dialect is somewhat stilted. Trinidadian culture plays a large role in the story, but besides the detailed descriptions of food and recipes, little historical and societal information is provided. A marginal purchase.-Lisa Crandall, formerly at Capital Area District Library, Holt, MI

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
Grades 7-10 Anjali is a girl who thinks in terms of cassava, jicama, and coconut milk. She works hard as a cook and waitress in her Trinidadian family's roti shop in Queens. Perpetually steeped in the smell of curry and truly passionate about cooking, Anjali aims to be the youngest Food Network chef ever at the age of 15. In spite of her lofty aspirations, Anjali must navigate the difficulties of fitting in at her high school with mixed ethnic heritage and as a partial-scholar student with a low-income family. Interspersed with the story line are recipes for dishes such as red-bean pudding and aloopie that readers can experiment with in their own kitchens. Anjali's African, Caribbean, and Indian roots, as well as her Hindu religion, provide an accessible forum for exploring many aspects of self-acceptance that are nearly universal to adolescents of every creed and origin.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)