author recipes

[chat + recipe + giveaway] Lee Wardlaw on My Book of Firsts

~ jama ~ 33 Comments

Today we’re excited to chat with award-winning author, poet and cat-wrangler Lee Wardlaw about My Book of Firsts: Poems Celebrating a Baby’s Milestones (Red Comet Press, 2025), illustrated by Bruno Brogna.

Though this is her first poetry collection, it’s not the first time Lee has visited us. She was one of our Potluck Poets back in 2012, the same year she won the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award for Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku (Henry Holt, 2011). We loved her purrfect “Catku” and the recipe she shared for Kitty Litter Cake. Me-wow!

Because My Book of Firsts is written from a baby’s perspective, the poems are that much more endearing. This emotive hug of a book is a joy to read aloud with its playful, inventive rhymes, lively cadences, and rich vocabulary. Each precious milestone from baby’s first year is cause for wonder and celebration, whether a First Day, First Friend, First Outing, First Word or those magical First Steps — and Brogna’s adorable animal families add just the right touch of charm and tenderness.

With its padded cover and allotted pages for recording your own baby’s milestones, this delightful book is an appealing keepsake for new parents, making it the perfect baby shower or birthday gift that families will be proud to share.

We thank Lee for telling us more about her literary bundle of joy with wonderful personal photos and a yummy recipe. Enjoy!

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[chat + recipe + giveaway] Andrea Potos on Two Emilys

~ jama ~ 29 Comments

We’re happy to welcome Wisconsin poet Andrea Potos back to talk about her recently published chapbook, Two Emilys (Kelsay Books, 2025).

As you may have guessed, the “Emilys” in question are revered literary icons Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson, contemporaries from opposite sides of the Atlantic who continue to mystify us with their creative genius. Though one was British and the other American, their lives had interesting parallels.

Both were unmarried and largely reclusive. They cherished home as sanctuary, wrote on scraps of paper while cooking and baking, were known for their bread recipes. The Emilys were religious skeptics living within religious families, and fascinatingly enough, they were ultimately Victorian badass writers “masquerading” as domestic spinsters, sublimating their passions and unfulfilled desires into art.

In Two Emilys, we travel with Potos to Haworth and Amherst via evocation, dream, memory, and imagination. She addresses her muses with awe and reverence, while acknowledging a unique kinship as fellow wanderer, keen observer, lover of beauty, and sister poet dedicated to her craft.

Andrea at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth.

These poems are sheer loveliness to read with moments ethereal, delicate, sometimes humorous, warmed by genuine admiration. We thank Andrea for dropping by to tell us more about the book and for sharing all the wonderful photos + a delicious recipe. 🙂

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[review + recipe + giveaway] Awesome Earth by Joan Bransfield Graham and Tania García

~ jama ~ 40 Comments

I’ve always been fascinated by volcanoes. When you grow up in Hawaiʻi, it’s a point of pride being able to claim that your home state has the largest active volcano on Earth (Mauna Loa), and it’s also the only state situated entirely on an archipelago. Kīlauea’s most recent (and ongoing) eruption on the Big Island started in December 2024, while Mauna Loa last spouted off in 2022.

The breathtaking spectacle of molten lava slowly making its way to the ocean and thereafter creating new land is both humbling and awe-inspiring. When I read Joan Bransfield Graham and Tania García’s brand new poetry picture book, Awesome Earth: Concrete Poems Celebrate Caves, Canyons and Other Fascinating Landforms (Clarion Books, 2025), I was reminded of how our home planet is an ever evolving, dynamic entity full of beauty and wonder.

FANTASTIC FORCES

The earth is
unsettled, it would seem,
for here and about it lets off
steam. Lava flows, geysers gush,
canyons are carved by a river's push.
The Earth's old crust cracks and creaks,
shakes and shoves up mountain peaks.
Ice caps recede, glaciers advance,
ever in motion -- a global dance.
Will it ever stand still?
Not a chance!

Fun to read and loaded with fascinating information, Awesome Earth is Graham’s valentine to the planet and a budding geologist’s dream. Her use of concrete poetry to describe a variety of landforms is the perfect way to celebrate their physical attributes, whether Continent or Island, Hill or Valley, Plain or Plateau. After all, landforms are all about size, shape, and structure; they themselves are a kind of topographical poetry.

Kids will find the 20+ poems delightfully accessible as Graham strikes a friendly tone via (mostly) first person point of view and personification to establish a sense of immediacy and direct engagement. Who could resist an amiable Island explaining the difference between his continental and oceanic ilk, or smaller “mini-me” versions of himself? He even invites readers to visit sometime — so charming!

We also get a sense of Mountain’s pride and majesty, as he seeks the sky, “enrobed with snow,” piercing the clouds, and I’m only too willing to forgive Peninsula’s boast: “I’ve got miles and miles of rocky or sandy, dandy coast!”

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[review + recipe] Chef Edna: Queen of Southern Cooking, Edna Lewis by Melvina Noel and Cozbi A. Cabrera

~ jama ~ 9 Comments

“One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been that I have never stopped learning about good cooking and good food.” ~ Edna Lewis

Picture this:

A group of African American family members and friends gathered outdoors around a long, white-clothed table covered with “warm fried chicken, thin slices of boiled Virginia ham, green beans cooked in pork stock, turnip greens picked that morning, potato salad with a boiled dressing, pickles, preserves, and yeast bread.” 

For dessert? Mincemeat, lemon meringue and fried apple pies, along with coconut and black walnut cakes. Don’t forget the watermelon and cantaloupe, the freshly ground coffee to be drunk out of bowls.

Miss Lewis, Culinary Ambassador and Grande Doyen of Southern Cooking.

This is the kind of homemade, homegrown food beloved chef and cookbook author Edna Lewis grew up with. Her advocacy of this simple style of cooking using only the freshest in-season ingredients anticipated the natural foods, slow food, and farm-to-table movements, essentially changing the way average Americans viewed Southern cuisine.

Beautiful painting of young Edna under the dust jacket!

In Chef Edna: Queen of Southern Cooking, Edna Lewis (Cameron Kids, 2032), Melvina Noel and Cozbi A. Cabrera trace Edna’s life from her childhood on a Virginia farm, to her early days as a working single, then finally to her prominence as a restaurant co-owner and chef-de-cuisine in NYC.

Essentially, what Edna first learned about cooking and everything associated with it – family, friends, love, community, cultural heritage – established her identity and defined her life’s work, as she remained committed to preserving traditional Southern foodways while showcasing the seminal role African Americans played in the origins of this regional cuisine.

It all began on a farm in Freetown, Virginia, an African American community founded by Edna’s grandfather and two other freed slaves. From an early age, Edna participated in all aspects of farm life: milking cows, chasing chickens, picking wild greens and gathering berries. Edna especially loved cooking with her mother, Mama Daisy.

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[author chat + giveaway] Patricia Toht on Pick a Perfect Egg

~ jama ~ 25 Comments

We can’t think of a better way to celebrate the season of blossoms, bunnies, chicks and eggs than by talking to Patricia Toht about her brand new picture book, Pick a Perfect Egg (Candlewick, 2023).

This third title in the wonderful series that includes Pick a Pine Tree and Pick a Pumpkin is once again beautifully illustrated by British artist Jarvis, and is, in many ways, a perfect book. 

Pitch perfect rhyming text? Check. Lively, inventive, never predictable rhymes frolic and sing as the narrative hums along. An absolute joy to read aloud. 

Illustrations that perfectly detail each story beat while capturing all the joys of the season? Check. Gorgeous colors and textures showcase spring loveliness, while an endearing main character positively sparkles as she picks, dyes, decorates, and hunts for eggs with neighborhood friends. And her adorable dog is always smiling. So much fun!

Pick a perfect egg
with care --
choose a white one
nestled there.

From farm fresh egg to Easter egg, this story is eggsactly what the Easter Bunny ordered. Sure to be a perennial favorite, it’s proof positive that when it comes to authors and illustrators, Toht and Jarvis are perfectly paired. 🙂

Welcome back, Patricia!!

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Author Patricia Toht

Please share a fond Easter egg memory from your childhood. How did you like to decorate your eggs? 

I grew up in a big family, so we had lots of coloring going on! My parents would spread a big drop cloth on our long table, and line it with mugs. I loved the fizzing tablets that dissolved in water to reveal their colors, and the smell of vinegar that was added to set the color. 

The “Easter Bunny” hid the colored eggs around the house, along with plastic eggs…until the year the dog ate all of the hard-boiled eggs, and we woke up Easter morning to find a very vomit-y dog! 

Childhood pic of Patricia (left front) with her family.
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