Group Soup! Thukpa for All by Praba Ram & Sheela Preuitt

GONGGGGG!

Tseering perks up and heads for home. Tikk Tiukkk... Tseering treks with his stick, sweeping it left and right.

Abi's noodle soup beckons. Hearty, chunky thukpa. Yummy, spicy thukpa.

His friend Rigzin calls hello and asks what is his hurry, and Tseering tells him his grandmother is making her special soup, the best in the village.

Would you like to join us? Tseering asks.

Who could resist? Apparently no one, because as Tseering's feet follow the pebbled path, first his uncle Tashi, whose lost lamb Tseering has returned, then Aunty, and then old Norboo, feeling poorly, happily accept his offer to share Abi's soup.

But back home, Tseering's recital of unexpected guests throws Abi into a tizzy:

"All of them! My dear boy! We need more water... hmmm...vegetables and noodles, too. Let me see what I can do!" Abi says, bustling around.

Tseering hurries to the pea patch to find some pods with peas, shells them out, and returns to the house, just in time to greet Rigzin arriving with cheese and some water. Neema Aunty brings apricot jam and freshly kneaded dough for noodles, Uncle brings buttered tea, and old Norboo brings spinach for the soup. Abi busies herself chopping onions and tomatoes and browning them up in her big soup pot when...the power goes out!

How can Abi finish preparing the soup in the dark?

"Lights on or off don't matter to me!" says Tseering. "I'll help you."

Tseering sniffs out just the right spices to season the vegetables and rolls out Aunty's dough for the noodles for the soup, and soon....

Abi's noodle soup is served.

And in Praba Ram and Sheela Preuitt's hearty and warm story, Thukpa for All (Consortium Books, 2018), everyone shares in the making and the eating of Abi's hot, spicy soup. With the colorful local illustrations of Shilpa Ranade, this story of cooperation and generosity is as warm as a big bowl of hearty, chunky thukpa. Just as in the European folk tale, Stone Soup, in this Asian version from the high mountains of India, all the unexpected guests bring along a little something for the dinner pot, a celebration of community that results in a plenitude of a unique potluck dinner. "An appealing introduction to a part of the world that’s underrepresented in picture books," adds School Library Journal."