Summer 2023      Volume 51, Number 3

Korean Home Cooking in Picturebooks as Cultural Education
By Jongsun Wee

Document: Article  

Introductory Paragraph:  In this article, I share Korean-American children’s responses to two culturally relevant picturebooks, Bee-bim Bop! (Park, 2008) and Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix (Martin & Lee, 2017), which feature Korean dishes and Korean families’ home cooking. Cooking and eating heritage dishes can be an effective way for immigrant families to teach children their culture and traditions. In an interview with School Library Journal, the author of Fry Bread, Kevin Noble Maillard, noted that food could leave an impression on children’s memories as it involves all five senses (Grabarek, 2019). He added that for young children who have not mastered the language, their experiences of food might stay with them for a lifetime. Maillard’s view suggests that immigrant children can learn about their cultural traditions and practices through partaking in preparing and sharing food of their heritage. In this study, along with examining Korean-American children’s responses to culturally relevant picturebooks, I added text analysis to explore what it means for Korean-American families to eat Korean food.

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.33600/IRCJ.51.3.2023.3

Page Numbers:   3-12