Author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Frank Morrison almost can’t stop joking with each other long enough to talk about their new picture book.
“Some like to think we’re a winning combination,” says Boston Weatherford. “Of course, it’s all because of me,” she laughs, but Morrison quickly agrees. “Of course, of course,” he says. “You always keep me on my game.”
Their first children’s book together was 2019’s The Roots of Rap. They were paired up because of Morrison’s background in the hip-hop industry. “I started hip-hop dancing and then I started club dancing,” he explains. This was back in the 1980s, and he went on tour to Europe. “That was a big part of my life and it kind of changed my scope on art as well,” Morrison says, “because I had a chance to go to the Louvre while I was out there… looking at the Mona Lisa, you think, ‘Oh, I thought it’d be bigger,’ but my gosh, it’s beautiful.”
Now, Frank Morrison and Carole Boston Weatherford have finished their sixth book together. In Family Feast!, the day begins early for Big Ma and Pops, who spend the morning peeling fruit for a pie and dressing the fish to fry. When aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters and brothers arrive, everyone gathers in the kitchen to cook, share recipes, gossip, catch up, shoot the breeze and lick the bowls.
Boston Weatherford says that everyone brings something different to the party, “whether it’s a dish or, you know, somebody got to be the joke master or the storyteller.”
“Family Feast! is inspired by the gatherings in my own family,” says Boston Weatherford. Even the little dog in the book is modeled after her beagle. And even though there’s a turkey on the table, this book could be about Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter or even any old weekend. “It kind of shows the conversation, the chaos and the culinary creations that come out of these family feasts,” she says.
