Children's books: Multicultural: "Twist, Tumble, Triumph", "Why We Eat Fried Peanuts", and "The Black Mambas"

Twist, Tumble, Triumph by Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky, illustrated by Martina Peluso (Kar-Ben Publishing)
Why We Eat Fried Peanuts by Zed Zha, illustrated by Sian James (becker&mayer! kids)
The Black Mambas by Kelly Crull (Millbrook Press)

Diving back into the world of picture books—multicultural edition!

As a champion gymnast, Ágnes Keleti was used to being upside down—but she wasn't used to the ways in which war turned her entire world upside down. Twist, Tumble, Triumph tells a young-reader version of her story of survival as a Jewish girl in 1940s Hungary—and her later success, when it was safe for her to compete again.

Keleti had quite the life; the book notes at the end that with the 1952 Olympics "she was just getting started", but her trials weren't over yet either; she later claimed asylum in Australia to avoid a life under the USSR and only moved back to Budapest in 2015.

The art is a little simpler than is my preference, but it's clean and gets the job done. A lot of detail is left out in the book, of course, because of the target age range, but adult readers will pick up on some of the things left unsaid or unexplored. It makes for a nice combination of history and sports book for young readers.

"Dad, why do we eat fried peanuts every New Year?" Mèng asks—and so we get a story about culture and family and history and language and, yes, fried peanuts, all in this short children's book. Why We Eat Fried Peanuts introduces young readers to a Chinese tradition, all wrapped in a story that also teaches them something about the past and about the hardships their forebears may have faced.

This makes for a charming and thoughtful read, with full-color illustrations to bring the story to life. I love that Mèng's father acknowledges that women have often been forgotten in history (Mèng's great grandmother is known only as tài nǎi nai, or "great grandmother", because her name has been lost to history) but that their stories should not be forgotten. I might have liked to see a bit more detail about the woman we see at the end of the story—she is even more lost to history, and her story is much sadder—but I might be asking a bit much out of a 32-page picture book that is already doing so much!

All in all, a solid addition to any young reader's shelves. I wouldn't mind reading some variation on this story written for adults, either. (Oh, and there's a recipe for fried peanuts at the end—too close to deep-frying for me, but if I were comfortable deep-frying at home I'd absolutely make them!)

And finally, The Black Mambas tells the story of an all-woman anti-poaching unit in South Africa. Told from the perspective of the women, readers are taken through their daily work and the importance of protecting the animals in the reserve.

I recently went on a tour in a tiger reserve in India, and our naturalist was one of only three woman naturalists in the reserve (3 women and 31 men). The naturalists were are from the local community, and their training was really just about how to present their knowledge—because they'd grown up in villages in the area and already knew how to track animals and what to look for. (I'm not sure whether there was an anti-poaching element—my partner was translating, and the naturalist was definitely most comfortable with animal questions, so there was a limit to how much I could ask.) And so of course I'm reminded of that in reading this book: of women stepping up to roles traditionally denied to them and doing fascinating and important work.

Most of the pictures in The Black Mambas are photographs, with the occasional fun activity for kids—guessing animal footprints, thinking through what route to take through the park under the given circumstances, etc. It's a really compassionate book, both celebrating the women doing this work (and the animals they're protecting) and noting that many poachers are just trying to feed their families and don't understand the broader implications of their actions.

I hope one (or more!) of these women eventually writes a full-length memoir, because the work they're doing is so interesting...but in the meantime, this makes for a great way to get kids curious about and interested in conservation work.

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing review copies through NetGalley.