Everyone looks forward to cracking open a fortune cookie after finishing a mouthwatering Chinese meal. What does the future hold (“You will meet a handsome stranger”)? What handy bit of wisdom awaits (“A closed mouth gathers no feet”)?

While we all enjoy these fun and pithy messages, it’s logical to assume fortune cookies are a Chinese invention, when in fact they most likely originated in Japan. What’s more, most people in China haven’t even heard of fortune cookies, let alone eaten them! 😯

In Fortune Cookies for Everyone!: The Surprising Story of the Tasty Treat We Love to Eat (Smithsonian/Red Comet Press, 2025), Mia Wenjen and Colleen Kong-Savage serve up a captivating intergenerational tale flavored with sides of history, mystery, and cultural pride. Learning about a food’s interesting backstory makes it even tastier, don’t you think?

As the story opens, Grandma Miyako has ordered Chinese takeout for her grandchildren Kenji and Keiko. After they’ve feasted on their favorites — salt and pepper squid, garlic pea pods, and beef lo mein — she hands them their fortune cookies, mentioning that she knew who invented them.

The kids are excited to hear more about that in the “long and twisty story” Grandma tells using her scrapbook. When she was a girl, Makoto Hagiwara, the man who ran the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, served tea with miso-flavored fortune cookies he made by hand using a kata (iron mold).

Because the cookies were so popular, Hagiwara asked Grandma’s best friend Yukiko’s father (who owned a bakery) to help him. Mr. Okamura was happy to do so, suggesting they change the cookie flavor to sweet vanilla and butter to make them more appealing to Americans.

These cookies were such a hit they sold out every single day. Japanese Americans in San Francisco who owned Chinese restaurants (because sushi wasn’t popular back then), included fortune cookies with the check at the end of the meal.

Yukiko also surprised Grandma on her birthday by showing her the bakery’s new fortune-cookie-making machine in the basement. They ate cookie after cookie!

Unfortunately, everything changed when America entered WWII. Grandma, Yukiko, their families, and many other Japanese Americans had to leave everything behind when they were relocated to internment camps. When Yukiko and her family returned to San Francisco after the war ended, they discovered their bakery equipment was gone.

Meanwhile, during the war, Chinese restaurants carried on the fortune cookie tradition, popularizing it all over the country. Returning soldiers stopping in Los Angeles and San Francisco on their way home encountered Chinese food and fortune cookies — a treat they soon came to expect at all Chinese restaurants.

Later, in 1983, there was a mock trial involving competing bakeries to determine whether the fortune cookie was invented in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Because the Los Angeles bakery’s molds had Makoto Hagiwara’s initials on them, San Francisco was ruled the winner. M.H.’s molds had traveled all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles!

But Keiko was still curious about where the fortune cookie came from in the first place. Grandma explained that when she visited Kyoto’s shrines and temples as a child, she bought fortunes called omikuji. Her favorite snack from nearby shops was tsujiura senbei (fortune crackers), “a type of Japanese cookie flavored with miso and sesame and folded around a paper fortune.” Grandma considers tsujiura senbei closest to what fortune cookies are today.

The story ends with a heartwarming piece of family history. After Keiko asks if fortune cookies are lucky, Grandma tells her about going out for dinner with her grandfather in Chinatown. She accepted his marriage proposal because her fortune cookie told her to (this really happened to the author’s mother)!

Colleen Kong-Savage’s beautiful cut-paper collage illustrations cleverly blend past and present with the inclusion of Kenji, Keiko and Grandma in depictions of past events. It’s as if they’ve stepped right into Grandma’s scrapbook: we see the three of them with Makoto Hagiwara showing them his kata in the tea garden, they’re also sampling freshly-baked cookies in Yukiko’s father’s bakery basement, and also sitting in a Chinese restaurant watching a soldier and his wife reading their fortunes at the next table.

Joyful scenes are tempered by Grandma, Kenji and Keiko witnessing Japanese Americans boarding a bus for an internment camp and gazing at detainees working there through a chain link fence. This adds a poignant sense of immediacy to Grandma’s telling, for the children are “right there” too, instead of passively looking at scrapbook photos.

Kong-Savage’s vibrant colors, inventive compositions and Japanese design motifs enrich and expand Wenjen’s narrative. She also uses a recurring swirl motif; we first see these emanating from the scrapbook, priming readers for the fascinating events contained therein. Grandma makes history come alive not only for her grandchildren but for us readers. The final double page spread of Grandma hugging Kenji and Keiko is a wonderful way to top off the book, as it captures their love and close bond.

Kids will enjoy reading about a favorite iconic food, appreciating how both Japanese and Chinese immigrants played important roles in its adaptation and popularization in America. The fortune cookie story has its twists, turns, and intriguing mysteries. And why not? You never know what your fortune will be until you crack open your cookie. The anticipation and surprise are why we like them so much. 🙂

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FORTUNE COOKIES FOR EVERYONE!: The Surprising Story of the Tasty Treat We Love to Eat
written by Mia Wenjen
illustrated by Colleen Kong-Savage
published by Smithsonian and Red Comet Press, October 21, 2025
Nonfiction Picture Book for ages 4-7, 32pp.
*Includes Author’s Note, Illustrator’s Note, Key Words list
**Junior Library Guild Gold Selection

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*Interior spreads text copyright © 2025 Mia Wenjen, illustrations © 2025 Colleen Kong-Savage, published by Smithsonian and Red Comet Press. All rights reserved.

*Copyright © 2025 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.