Hot Cross Buns for Everyone

Throwing it back to a few weeks ago and Easter celebrations. No celebration is complete without some delicious warm hot cross buns! In Hot Cross Buns for Everyone, Yolanda T. Marshall and Daria Lavrova take readers to an Easter party filled with all kinds of hot cross buns.

Jackson has invited all of his friends to an Easter party and they each want to bring their own special version of a hot cross bun. There are so many people at the party, all bearing buns, that they have enough to share with the whole neighbourhood.

Yolanda T. Marshal’s lyrical story/poem is a celebration on and off the page. There is community, sharing and, most importantly, food. Food is a way we can all come together as a community and I love how each person in the story brings their own version of a hot cross bun by adding their own spices and flavourings, reflective of their heritage. There are a couple of rhymes that don’t quite hit their mark but the story flows rhythmically from page to page.

Yolanda is always sure to share a delicious recipe at the end of her stories and obviously this time we get a spicy hot cross bun recipe. I have not tried it because my baking skills can be sometimes suspect and to be honest, I just haven’t had the time to invest in baking, but do they ever look and sound DELICIOUS! 

Along with the recipe, Yolanda includes a little history lesson on the origin of the hot cross bun as well as discussion questions and activity ideas to go along with the story. I really love it when authors and/or publishers include these things in their books as it helps parents and educators spend more time with the book and expand on the learning potential in the story.

Daria Lavrova’s illustrations are a brilliant, joy filled celebration. They are dreamy and vividly colourful, enticing the reader to read more and more.