Words That Taste Like Home

By Sandhya Parappukkaran &  Michelle Pereira
Reviewed by Mia Macrossan

Sandhya Parappukkaran and Michelle Pereira are both award-winning creators. Together, they have produced the picture books, The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name (Notable book, winner of the 2022 CBCA Book of the Year New Illustrator Award and a finalist in the QLD Premier’s Literary Awards), Amma’s Sari (2023 CBCA Notable book and a finalist in the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Award), Stay for Dinner (winner 2024 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Literary Award) and now their latest Words That Taste Like Home.

Words That Taste Like Home  is about being born in one language and then having to learn and live using a new one. What happens when you and your family are the only ones speaking your birth language and everyone else speaks something totally different?

Rohan is a South Indian boy who enjoys making mango pickle with his Muthassi (grandmother).  He listens to her stories and her songs. But when his family moves to a different country, Rohan has to concentrate every day on learning the new language. Every evening he talks to his grandmother but gradually contact is less often and when he does speak to her his words do not flow as easily, even if they do ;taste like home’ . The words are not as easy as those he now uses all day every day. It takes a visit back home for him to rediscover the language that has never really left him and to reconnect with his grandmother.

Words and pictures combine to make a complex situation accessible to young readers. Michelle’s immediately recognizable artwork here uses a rich colour palette to contrast the different elements that make up Rohan’s two worlds. Each page is rich in detail and a feast for the eyes perfectly complementing Sandhya’s sensitive text. This is an important story that will resonate with anyone who has left one culture and language behind to adopt a new, perhaps quite different culture and language.

It encourages young bilingual readers to take pride in their first language and to retain ties to the family and culture ‘back home’. It gives monolingual readers valuable insights into experiences and emotions that will enable them to empathise with their bilingual friends. Australia has been a multicultural country for many years now and we all recognise and appreciate how all our lives have been immeasurably enriched by the contributions from and connections to other cultures.

This timely resource is long overdue and will be invaluable for language and cross-cultural studies while both bilingual and monolingual families will find much to share, enjoy and discuss in this splendidly written and sublimely illustrated picture book.

Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing 2024
Sandhya Parappukkaran
Michelle Pereira