*Review* Famous Seaweed Soup by Antoinette Truglio Martin

 

Genre: Children's 5-6 years

Published: May 9, 2023

Pages: 32

Beach days are the best days and Sara loves everything about the beach. Her favorite part is making her Famous Seaweed Soup. Collecting all the ingredients is a tough job but Sara thinks she’s up to the task!
Can she make it all by herself or will a busy family foil her recipe?

I received a copy of this book through Netgalley. This is my honest review. 

This is basically a modern retelling of The Little Red Hen, about a girl making seaweed soup while her family is at the beach. She spends all day asking her parents to help her gather the ingredients for the soup, but they are always busy with something else, so she has to do it all herself. But as this seaweed soup is not actually cooked, or particularly edible, instead of her keeping it all for herself since no one helped her, she decides that they must eat it, not her. I thought it was a cute twist. 

The illustrations were colorful, perfectly showing the steps of making the famous seaweed soup. And I felt sorry for the little girl in the story every time her parents said they were busy with someone else when she was wanting to play with them (which is super hypocritical of me as a parent because I've definitely been busy with other things when my kids have wanted to play at times too). This is a story that I'd definitely be able to read a few times before I wanted to hide the book from my kids. Overall I give it 4.154 out of 5 stars. - Katie 

Amazon

Antoinette Truglio Martin is a children’s book author, memoirist, and blogger. The memoir, Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer (She Writes Press 2017) chronicles her first year battling breast cancer as a wimpy patient. Becoming America’s Stories (Red Penguin Books), a middle-grade historical fiction series, debuted in 2020. The award-winning three-book series includes The Heart of Bakers and Artists (formally titled Daily Bread), The Dreams of Singers and Sluggers, and The Wishes of Sisters and Strangers. The stories take place in 1911 and follows nine-year-old Lily Taglia, an American-born child of Sicilian immigrants, coming of age in New York City’s Lower East Side tenement while important milestones of American history unfolds.

Currently, Antoinette’s beloved picture book, Famous Seaweed Soup, will be reissued in May 2023 with Purple Butterfly Press. This new edition will feature new illustrations by Penny Weber and updated content.

Antoinette proudly holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook/Southampton University. Be sure to visit her website and blog, Stories Served Around The Table at https://storiesserved.com/. She lives on Long Island with her husband and is surrounded by the sea and the people she loves.