Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story

Fry Bread | Poetry | Kevin N. Mallard | Robert F. Sibert Medal; NCTE Notable Poetry Book; ALA Notable Children’s Book | ages 4-8 | 

“Fry bread is you” 

Think of your own food that makes your culture stand out. Pupusas from El Salvador? Tamales from Mexico? Fry Bread is a Native American story in poetry form describing and defining what fry bread is in their culture. What it means, what it looks like, smells like, what it represents, how it was created. 

There’s not many children books about Native Americans (at least not that I’ve seen) and this poem brings some knowledge about it. Food is life as we can all agree. And though it sounds like a joke, it truly is a big part of our life. Fry bread is part of the Native American family history, and Mallard shows us this through poems. Fry Bread is great for preschool to second grade, though I would like to use it in a high school culinary class. In the end of the book, there’s a recipe for fry bread and it’d be fun to have the class try out a new dish. In a younger class setting, I’d have students create a similar poem following the books outline with a food of their choice, and if they’d like, bring their dish to class. YUM!