Bread and Jam

I read Bread and Jam for Frances to X-Man the other night. It was one of the more significant books of my early childhood. When I was 2 I received a Steiff bear in my Easter basket (yeah, Easter, should have been a bunny, whatever). I named her Frances and she became my most significant toy for the next 10 years. I realize Frances is a badger, not a bear, but don't get hung up on the details, okay?

With this rereading of it, it dawned on me why I liked the book so much. Once Frances has her epiphany and realizes there is more to eat than bread and jam, Hoban spends a page describing her lunch.

I have a thermos bottle with cream of tomato soup . . . a lobster-salad sandwich on thin slices of white bread. I have celery, carrot sticks, and black olives, and a little cardboard shaker of salt for the celery. And two plums and a tiny basket of cherries. And a vanilla pudding with chocolate sprinkles and a spoon to eat it with.

The utterly charming illustration that accompanies this shows Frances at her school desk with her lunch spread out on a doiley and finished off with a tiny vase of violets. How could you not love this? It's all about the food and the presentation of the food. I was a fledgling foodie then--my parents are still some of the foodiest foodies I know--so of course I found this just.so.charming and appealing on many levels. I think it's the cherries in a basket and the cardboard salt shaker that put me over the edge.

On the way home from school the next day, X started plotting out his lunch--"a grilled cheese sandwich, a boiled egg, a little shaker of salt, a bunch of celery . . ."

The legacy continues.