Everybody Cooks Rice by Norah Dooley
This children's book provides an excellent platform for opening the discussions of respect, identity, and culture. The book is best suited for grades PK-3, but the literature responses to support diversity and inclusion can vary based on the grade level. In this book, the main character Carrie must find her brother, Anthony for dinner. In doing so, she encounters several homes, each of which is preparing a different rice meal. While this book focuses on rice across cultures, it provides a window for classrooms to discuss food across cultures and how food can bring us together. In a PK -1 classroom, this book would be an excellent shared reading that would lead to culturally relevant dramatic play. A dramatic play center could be established as an extension to the shared reading, using food across cultures to support the understanding of respect, identity, and culture. The center could provide basic restaurant props, with rice or other food that spans cultures such as bread. There could be photos/pictures of familiar rice dishes or loaves of bread, aprons, plastic mixing bowls, wooden spoons, rolling pins, and a rice maker. The center could be elaborated over time to include more diverse props. The key is that the center reflects the diversity of your classroom, and with intentional support from teachers, the book and center can be a tool to reflect children’s communities and cultures. In a 2- classroom, this book can be used to support the discussion of identity and who we are. Food is always an important part of our identity; it often correlates to our cultural identity. As a literature extension for grades 2-3, students could create identity boxes that contain symbols of their internal and external identity. This book provides a pathway for opening those discussions about identity not just what people see on the outside, but also our invisible cultural and personal identities. Table 5 provides the window and mirror questions to use with Everybody Cooks Rice.