On special days Reshma eat sadhya, a traditional multi-course vegetarian meal served on banana leaves. This is very different from the meals she shares in the homes of her friends - Charlotte's mum serves roast chicken, carrots, peas, and pumpkin and the family use knives and forks to eat their meal.
"I wonder why we don't use cutlery. Papa always says the food tastes better when we eat it with our hands."
At Phoebe's place the family eat noodles, and dumplings using chop sticks. And the next day at Leo's Reshma joins them for spaghetti and meatballs - twirled around forks.
Mama suggests they should thank everyone for taking care of Reshma. Everyone is invited for dinner.
"Will my friends laugh? Eating with hands is not like ting-ting cutlery or click-clack chopsticks."
All of this reminded me of Amma's Sari and the anxiety of that little girl when she thought her mum looked different. Young Reshma is also worried about being embarrassed and she's worried about how the other parents will react to eating with their hands from banana leaves. Not to mention the burping!
Publisher blurb: Reshma loves dinnertime with her family. Her family eat with their hands – not just finger food type–eating, but hands-on squishy eating. When she’s invited to stay for dinner at her friends’ places, she finds out that they all eat in different ways. Some go ting ting with their cutlery, and others go click clack with their chopsticks. So what will her friends say when they see her family eat with their hands?
There is some delicious language in this book: keepie-uppies; jostle; ting-ting; prong; click clack; clickety-clack; swish swish; splatters; rice rains down; sambar splashes; pappadum smashes.
Here are a set of teachers notes from the publisher. These notes also include a fabulous and extensive book list with terrific titles to source and share with your class.
I thought of this one - long out of print but it might be in your school library:
Australia is a multicultural country and many schools or should I say the majority of schools in my state of New South Wales would have children from so many places around the world. Oddly though, my former school did not. There were only a handful of children across the school who came from UK, South Africa and one or two from USA - and that's out of a school population of 850+. My former school had a sister school relationship with another school in a different part of Sydney and that school had children from over 60 different countries. All of that means this book is an even more important one to share with students in any school - it will be affirming for many children and hopefully create awareness and empathy in others.
This is the third book by Sandhya and Michelle. I was on the CBCA (Children's Book Council of Australia) judging panel when their first book was submitted for the New Illustrator award. AND YES it was the winner! I am going to predict that Stay for Dinner will be on the CBCA Picture Book Notables list for 2024 and it has a good chance of reaching the shortlist too. (I am not a judge for this round).
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