'The Funny Foods Best Friends' Book Review

"The Funny Foods Best Friends" was written by the daughter of author Jessica D. Adams. Janiece has helped illustrate some of her mom's books and when her mom told her she should write a story about her food characters, she did!

First off, before we get into the story, I love the fact that Janiece was brave enough to go for it and write and illustrate her own book at a young age! The benefit of living in this digital age is that many things that were out of reach for us when we were younger are right at our kids' fingertips! I love sharing the stories of kids who are taking chances, making change, and just taking an active part in figuring out their place in this world - so I had to share Janeice's book!

Now, on to the story.  It's a simple story about Peppsie the Pizza whose sole mission is to make friends. The illustrations are adorable and so perfectly child-like! I love all the different expressions on the characters' faces but my favorite illustration is when Peppsie splatters sauce all over the flowers! While the illustrations may be child-like, the story provides us with an incredibly important and mature message for kids and grown-ups alike: to make a friend, you have to first be a friend. Peppsie learns that you don't make friends just by going up to people and asking them to be your friend (although I do applaud Peppsie's confidence in approaching people he's never met!). This message resonated so loudly with me right now because we recently adopted two pet rats and I've been trying to teach the kids that to form a good bond with the rats, you have to let them be and get comfortable around you. But being patient is so hard when you just want to pick them up and snuggle them! Hopefully, the kids will learn to be gentler and more patient and the rats will learn the kids love them and just want to take care of them and hang out and everyone can be happy snuggling together! And hopefully this book will help people out there realize that if they want true friends, they have to be a kind and respectful friend themselves.