Recipe for Rhyme and Rescue

From Wanda Taylor, a delicious new novel about food, friendship and the power of poetry. For fans of Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan’s A Place at the Table and Jessica Kim’s Stand Up, Yumi Chung!

When Darla Cooper finds her grandmother’s old recipe book in the attic, it is as if her grandmother is speaking to her from beyond the grave. Food is memory. And no one knows this foodie truth better than Darla and her friends.

United by a love of food and a passion for words, Darla and the Food Poets meet at Carol’s Café every week. There they exchange poetry inspired by community and cookery and share these poems with Carol’s customers. As the group drifts through lazy summer days, sharing poem after poem, Darla notes in her grandmother’s book how food brings people together and lights up her imagination. Be it a baby shower, a long-awaited reunion or a wedding, Darla never fails to write down her thoughts alongside her grandmother’s words.

But when Darla loses her grandmother’s book at a food festival, everything seems to fall apart. Darla feels stuck, unable to perform her words as she once did. Was the book the real key to her poetry? And now, worst of all, it seems that Carol’s Café might be headed for a permanent closure. Despite their own troubles, the Food Poets must scramble to find the right words, make the grown-ups listen and save the café!

WANDA TAYLOR is the author of fiction and non-fiction books for children and adults. She is also a screenwriter, a journalist and a college professor. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications including Quill & Quire and the Globe and Mail. Taylor’s middle grade non-fiction book Birchtown and the Black Loyalists was listed as one of the top Black history books for young readers by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. Her recent novel The Grover School Pledge won the Northern Lights Middle Grade Book of the Year Award in 2023.