Staff of Life! Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Maillard

FRY BREAD IS FOOD.

Fry bread, usually associated with Native American people, was born of government subsidies of commodities like white flour, salt, oils, and white sugar, but it is like many of the ancient breads of humankind, simple mixtures of grain and liquid cooked by people without ovens to bake the standard oblong we call "bread."

Fry bread is the first cousin of many breads--the tortilla of the Southwest, the hoecake of the South, the Johnnycake or "journey cake,"of the American pioneer, the ubiquitous crepe, the na'an of Asia, the pita of the Middle East, the sailor's hardtack, even the pigkeeper's wife's hlaf that King Alfred of Wessex famously let burn on the fire stone. Made from many ground grains, leavened or unleavened, they are the historic "staff of life," the daily bread of all of us, round like the sun and like the earth that grew it.

There are many recipes, some puffy and risen with baking powder and yeast, some thin and flexible, some sweet and some grainy, sometimes brown, sometimes white, sometimes tan.

FRY BREAD IS HISTORY.

It is a bread of necessity....

THE LONG WALK, THE STOLEN LAND, PLACES WE CALL HOME.

FRY BREAD IS NATION.

It takes a mother or a nana, plenty of kids to fetch and stir and eat, a meal for a family, and someone to grow it, to make it all together, in Kevin Noble Maillard's multiple award-winning Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story (Roaring Brook Press, 2019), in which the author's lyric text and Juana Martinez-Neal's soft pencil and acrylic illustrations bespeak the universal aspects of breadmaking and sharing. Recipes for several sorts of fry breads are included and illustrated.

"Fry bread becomes a metaphor for resilience. born ironically; Fry Bread celebrates the thing itself and much, much more . . . . Maillard and Martinez-Neal bring depth, detail, and whimsy to this Native American food story, with text and illustrations depicting the diversity of indigenous peoples, the role of continuity between generations, and the adaptation over time of people, place, and tradition.” writes Booklist.