Book Review

Moon Cakes to Maize
Edited and retold by Norma J. Livo
Fulcrum Resources (1999)
800-992-2908
Reviewed by Alan Irvine

I like stories and I like food, both cooking it and eating it, so I was definitely interested in having a look at this book. I was not disappointed. Norma Livo has pulled together a delightful collection of folktales from around the world organized around an intriguing theme: food stories. The book is divided into six sections : Legends and Beliefs; Fables and Rhymes; Noodleheads; Variations on a Theme; Herbs, Seasonings, and Spices; Magic and Trickery. Each section contains a collection of tales, usually about ten or so. The stories come from England, United States, Germany, Greece, Russia, Finland, Japan, Southeast Asia, China, Mexico, various Native American traditions, and others. There is even a selection from the Bible (although for some reason Livo chose the King James language instead of a translation in modern English.) At the end of each section, she includes "Food for Thought," a collection of follow-up activities that teachers or parents can use to build upon the stories.

I started reading the collection because, as I said, I was intrigued by the idea. I kept reading because I enjoyed it, and in the end read the entire book. Does that sound like damning with faint praise? It's not. I usually do not read folktale anthologies all the way through. Often I will pick them up and flip through at random, stopping at the tales that look interest ing. Or I will start at the beginning and read the stories in order, but gradually my interest will flag. I like folk tales, but after awhile I want to get to something with more substance. (Novels are my reading material of choice.) This collection, however, held my interest all the way through. Livo avoids the trap of offering up more of the same. So many collections include stories that are but minor variations of old standards. After a while, I know how every story is going to end, and I feel as if I had already read the book many times over. Because she starts with such a specific and somewhat off-beat theme, Livo is forced to seek out less familiar tales, and so the book never falls into that trap. There was always something more to discover, a new theme to explore. Part of the fun was in seeing if Livo could pull it off. An anthology with such a specific theme like this can be a tricky undertaking. Will it all hold together? Inevitably there are stories that do not really belong. And, indeed, there are a few stories here that disappoint. A couple of stories get in just because somebody sits down and eats something at some point, or a food item is mentioned once or twice in passing. The Noodleheads section is particularly weak, with a couple of stories included, as far as I could tell, simply because they feature fools, and one synonym for a fool is a noodlehead, and the word "noodlehead" contains the word "noodle" which is a food. But these stories are vastly outnumbered by stories which do fit the theme. There are stories explaining the origins of different foods. Stories in which the quest for food is the main action. Stories in which food items play a key role. Stories of magic foods and exotic foods and everyday foods. I particularly liked the section Herbs, Seasonings, and Spices, in which every story had a strong connection both to the overall theme and the section theme.

I liked the Food for Thought pages at the end of each section. Each one offers ten to twenty different activities, ranging from suggestions for researching additional stories to exploring background information, to writing new stories, interviewing people with food knowledge, field trips, arts and crafts. Livo offers such a wide range of activities that any teacher or parent should be able to find something fun and appropriate. Unfortunately, few of the activities related directly back to the specific stories just read; indeed, many did not really reflect the theme of the section and could easily follow any story in the book. In the end however, they all establish some way of using the idea of food as an organizing theme for exploring the world.

Moon Cakes to Maize ranks as one of my favorite collections of the last couple of years, and I heartily recommend it.

—published in WIP Winter 2000.