I love little known historical tales and this one is so cleverly written!

Mia Wenjen has visited my blog before.  She blogs about parenting, children’s books, and education at PragmaticMom.com and is the co-creator of Read Your World, celebrating Multicultural Children’s Book Day, a nonprofit celebrating diversity in children’s books. She is the author of several illustrated nonfiction children’s books, including Changing the Game: Asian Pacific American Female Athletes, Asian Pacific American Heroes, and Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World. Mia Wenjen lives in Boston with her husband and three kids.  You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or on BlueSky.

FORTUNE COOKIES FOR EVERYONE!: THE SURPRISING STORY OF THE TASTY TREAT WE LOVE TO EAT is a picture book all about the murky origin of the fortune cookie. Who knew that such a nonfictional tale could be so dramatic? Mia uses a frame of a grandmother telling her grandkids about the history of the cookie, but there’s real life intrigue included here that did in fact surprise me. I had some idea about the origin of the cookie, but I had no idea about the clash of facts.

Welcome back Mia!

Me: One of your previous picture books (i.e., The Traveling Taco) dealt with tracing the cultural origins of some of the most popular foods. Now here you are talking about the origin of fortune cookies. Were the ideas hatched at the same time? What gave you the idea for this story?

Mia: I wrote The Traveling Taco because it was my way to fight back against the negative rhetoric against immigrants by our current administration. I wanted to show that many of the foods that we all know and love are because of immigrants. I got the idea for the picture book after watching the Netflix’s series, The Taco Chronicles. It is a series about all the different kinds of tacos in Mexico. I learned that the Al Pastor taco is from the Lebanese who immigrated to Puebla in Mexico and brought their shawarma tradition with them and then adapted it to what was available in Mexico (pork instead of lamb, for example).

Fortune Cookies for Everyone came out of a family road trip with my oldest when she was visiting art colleges as a high school student. We stayed near Fisherman’s Wharf on our way to see the total solar eclipse in Oregon. The Boudin bakery there had a display of all the inventions from San Francisco, and I noted ‘Fortune Cookies” with great surprise. When I researched it for a story, it became this mystery with many moving parts, and lots of conflicting information.

Me: I bet! I love your approach to the story as one told to grandchildren. What gave you the idea for that angle to share the nonfiction information?

Mia: My critique partner, Anne Lambert, has given me such insight into how to flip the narrative of my manuscripts from boring to exciting. She always points out how my author’s note is the heart of my story, which otherwise feels very “Wikipedia” boring. Once she pointed out that the most interesting part of my manuscript was when my mother accepted my father’s marriage proposal based on the fortune cookie she opened, my mind raced. My mother was born in Japantown and moved to Los Angeles after being forced to move during WWII for being Japanese American. Her move followed the fortune cookie story, and that was how I figured out the narrative for the story. I am hoping to make this into a series, and I have another manuscript about the story of sugar…

Me: Ohh! Fascinating! I’d love to read that. It’s amazing to me how alive this story feels without slipping into passive tense, explaining, didactic teaching, or even “talking down” to readers. I’m sure that must have been a challenge with the framework you picked to tell the story and yet you manage to evade all of those potential writing potholes. How many revisions did this manuscript go through to get to the finished state? Did it go through many revisions or was this a gift of the Muse?

Mia: I do go through many, many revisions with a critique partner or group, and a private editor that I hire (Tiny Tales Editing) who helps me polish my manuscripts for submission. And then there are more edits from my editor. I think the biggest challenge for this book was to figure out fact from fiction. Thankfully, my illustrator, Colleen Kong-Savage, is not just amazingly talented as an artist, but also a thorough fact checker! When the Smithsonian did its own fact checking, unbeknownst to both Colleen and me, they didn’t find any inaccuracies. Phew!

I think in general that I write at a level that is too old for my reader so I have to work during my revision process to make the story accessible for a younger reader.

Me: This is a book that is a collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, yet it’s published by Red Comet Press. Can you talk about the marketing of it? How did that collaboration come about?

Mia: I am thrilled that the Smithsonian Institution was interested in Fortune Cookies for Everyone! They are a publishing partner in that they make sure that the book has no errors and offer editorial suggestions before it goes to print. They also add this book to their own collection. I think it provides a stamp of approval for authenticity and accuracy!

This partnership went down during ALA in San Diego when my publisher met with the person in charge of the Smithsonian Institution’s children’s publishing arm. She has since retired at the end of November, but she is fabulous to work with!

Me: In the back matter, you mention some unique challenges in finding out who was actually the creator of the fortune cookie. Can you talk about your research process? How in the world did you find some of these facts? How deep did you have to go in your research? Any special resources?

Mia: I started off with a nonfiction adult book about the fortune cookie, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8 Lee, and then it was a rabbit hole into the details not provided in that book. Many of the stories that I found online contradicted each other, so it was quite a bit of digging online and reviewing the information to come up with what actually happened.

Me: Colleen Kong-Savage’s illustrations are amazing! I love what she did with collage. That barbed wire spread is phenomenal! I didn’t even realize she had also worked Japanese design motifs into the collage as well until I read her notes in the back matter. Were there any illustration surprises for you?  Any favorites? 

Mia: It has been such a thrill for me to get to know Colleen. We met at ALA and got to hang out with her there. She is such an amazing artist and person. The spread of the Japanese Tea Garden at the Golden Gate Park is one of my favorite spreads. The barbed wire one is also so emotionally impactful to me. She also does large scale murals and works with kids as a teaching artist.

Me: What surprised you in writing this story?

Mia: There is the Perry Mason/OJ Simpson trial moment when the kata is pulled out as physical evidence of who invented the fortune cookie. While it was not an actual trial – it was a Mock Trial – it had the same drama! I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when it happened!

Right? Such a fascinating story. Thank you so much for visiting my blog again today Mia.

Dear readers, this book published in October and has already won awards. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I highly recommend tracking it down. It’s a fascinating slice of history with some facets that still remain hotly debated. Trust me when I say, you won’t want to miss it!