Lasagna Means I Love You

Lasagna Means I Love You by Kate O'Shaughnessy was misshelved in the library.  I took it out instead of putting it where it belonged.  

Like A Spoonful of Time, the book was about a middle school girl with a non-nuclear family with food playing an important role, particularly with themes involving family and trying to find out about family you don't know.  That one involved time travel, this one about a girl who enters the foster system after her grandmother dies.   

Mo first goes to a woman who already has a foster child, but she soon is put in a "pre-adoption" placement with a young well-off white couple.  This seems a lucky break on her part and a non-white foster child who already had multiple placements grumbled about it. Mo later talks about the unfairness of the situation and we also get a bit of an inside look at the system. It is shown with a certain degree of complexity.

The story takes place in New York City and we get a sense of place there as a whole.  For instance, Mo is a big Jets fan (though for some reason the author did not seem to get the right teams when she cited two games), a an NYT food writer is involved, as trips are on the subway and to Central Park. 

The book is written in Mo's voice -- she writes letters to her grandmother about what is happening -- and overall she comes off as a real character (including having trouble with bedwetting, which at first she wants to blame on someone else).  A few times, I wondered if words were what some typical 11/12-year-old would say, but what do I know about them? 

Her experiences are not exactly typical in some respects  (that whole well-off couple though the author mixes in some nuance by making the wife a former foster kid herself) but the book feels realistic as a whole.  There is a twist, and you are like "the author isn't going to be this mean to this kid, right," but things work out.  

Both books promote diversity with biracial friends and gay-friendly stuff is simply dropped without much comment.  I suppose again this is just normal stuff for many kids these days.  The author went to culinary school so the recipes come from a reliable source on that end too.  The recipes aren't very vegan/vegetarian friendly though I suppose most of them can be changed with some animal substitutes including veggie crumbles for the lasagna. 

And, both of the author's books (the time travel book is by someone else; she talks about her first book a bit in the video) are about family and finding it in new and challenging ways.   

ETA:  I found Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (I read her book about a special French mouse) on the free rack today since apparently it's "middle school girl" theme day.  Food doesn't play as big of a role here though some special lozenges do.  I liked it too.

A girl with only a dad finds a special dog and he helps her make a lot of colorful friends in her new town.  The dog doesn't like to be alone, so I guess when she started school (the book all takes place in the summer), her dad and maybe one of the others helped to take care of him.  Unless the school lets him stick around too.  The book was the author's first and was made into a movie.  She has written many more since then.   

I don't know if any are gay, but it wouldn't surprise me.