Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story

Celebrate family, food, culture, and community with Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal. This beautifully illustrated children’s picture book shares the meaning of fry bread through warm, lyrical verse, showing how one food can represent family, tradition, memory, history, resilience, and Native identity. Macmillan describes the book as an evocative story about “family, history, culture, and traditions, new and old.”

Published by Roaring Brook Press, this 48-page picture book is recommended for ages 3–6 and was released on October 22, 2019. It received the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal and was named an American Indian Youth Literature Picture Book Honor Winner.

Through the story of a modern Native American family making fry bread together, young readers are introduced to themes of heritage, belonging, intergenerational love, food traditions, Native American culture, and community connection. This meaningful book is perfect for families, classrooms, homeschool learning, libraries, cultural education, and children’s book collections.