Sandor Katz’s love of fermented food started with kosher dill pickles he ate as a New York City kid. As an adult, he left the busy city and moved to a queer community in the mountains of Tennessee. There, his friends grew their own food, cooked and ate together, and sometimes danced in drag when the work was done. One day, the cabbages were all, ALL ready to be harvested. What to do? Sandor tried to make sauerkraut. Delicious! He kept experimenting, finding old recipes, combining old ideas to make something new. Then, he shared what he learned in bestselling books, in classes, and with a growing group of friends around the world.
Sandor Katz and the Tiny Wild folds timely themes of ecology, community-building, and resilience into a lively biography that closes with a hands-on recipe: just chop, salt, pack, and wait for tiny, wild, invisible microbes to turn raw ingredients into zingy, zangy foods that we love. Sandor believes that making fermented foods connects all, ALL of us on planet Earth—people, plants, and The Tiny Wild. Won’t you join Sandor’s crew and share your own dash of dazzle with the world? (Source)
Authors: Jacqueline Briggs Martin & June Jo Lee
Illustrator: Julie Wilson
Author Jacqueline Briggs Martin grew up on a farm in Maine and moved to Iowa when she married her husband, Rich. The couple raised their two children there, and reading to them inspired Martin to begin her career writing children’s books. She’s now authored 23 titles, including Caldecott winner Snowflake Bentley.
Author June Jo Lee co-founded Readers to Eaters, an independent children’s book publisher focused on stories about our diverse food cultures. She studied cultural anthropology at Harvard. She grew up trans-nationally between Seoul, Palo Alto, and Austin, eating her mom’s alien kimchi. She lives in San Francisco.
Illustrator Julie Wilson has created billboards in Times Square in New York and the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles; murals at Coney Island; graphics for Central Park SummerStage, restaurants, a church, and a toy store; and many editorial illustrations for magazines and newspapers. Her artwork has been heavily influenced by TV cartoons and Pop Art. This is her first picture book. She lives in Santa Monica, California, where she works in a garage with the big door open, the sun shining in, and music or old movies playing in the background.
Sandor Katz is the bestselling author of many books including The Art of Fermentation, which won a James Beard Foundation Book Award in 2013. Through his writing and workshops, Sandor shares his love for the transformative power of microbes to make delicious fermented foods. He lives in Middle Tennessee.
