100 Books Like On Air with Zoe Washington

I absolutely fell in love with the spunk of Mexican American tween Malú when I first picked up this amazing book!

Her love of punk rock and her subsequent discovery of the genre’s connection to her Mexican roots, her desire to be accepted by her mother and her new schoolmates—just as she is, and her fight against her school to allow everyone there to express themselves as authentically as they can had me rooting for her at every page. Oh, and did I mention the super fun zine drawings?

This story made me both sad and hopeful, which is why it’s made this list. I found Pandita’s struggle to come to peace with the death of her mother really moving, especially when she turns her grief into advocating for a cause that she truly believes in.

Perkins’ writing is exquisite, and the themes of preserving and respecting the past while adjusting to and addressing the needs of the future are very relevant today. Seeing Pandita slowly find her voice is also oh-so inspiring. 

Lupe Wong needs to get straight A's in order to meet her favorite baseball player, but it’s a losing battle against the horror of square dancing for gym class! I loved how full of humor, heart, and conviction the sports-loving Lupe is, and I connected with Lupe’s struggles as she tries to fight her school, only to discover what’s actually worth fighting for—and what she’s truly capable of accomplishing.

There’s also a wit to Lupe that I found immensely appealing, and I laughed out loud at her sharp observations about adults, kids, and the state of the world she’s fighting to change.

Although this story is not set in a school setting, this historical fiction novel-in-verse still fits really nicely into this theme of youth activism. I found Salazar’s writing very poetically moving yet accessible to young readers at the same time.

Lula’s dream to be the ringleader of a Mexican traveling service is creative and fun, yet the realities and struggles of her migrant farmworker family are very real and viscerally felt. I felt very inspired by Lula’s strength and voice as she and her family fought in the farmworkers’ rights movement in California in the 1960s, making this book a must-read for the future changemakers of today.

In the Twentieth Century, the U.S. took stock of its regional specialties, resulting in landmark publications around the country. Many of the resulting books then and now tend to fixate on recipes alone, the tip of the culinary iceberg.  

During the 1980s, John Egerton meandered around the South looking for vestiges of vittles only found there at a time when regional cooking specialties across the US seemed to be fading fast.  With snippets of travel writing, interviews with artisans, anecdotes, and recipes, Southern Food demonstrated the culinary vitality and diversity of the South in one volume.   

Egerton’s work revealed the need for deeper research and more context to make sense of culinary traditions. It also helped casual observers to recognize the importance of Southern food, and that before mass-produced popular culture took hold, all food was essentially regional.

Romeo & Juliet retellings are, in my opinion, the absolute hardest ones to bring anything new to, but Le’s own voices portrayal of Vietnamese culture smashed all my preconceptions and turned what’s often a dry, predictable format into something so insightful and compelling it genuinely took my breath away. With real, authentic teenage protags facing real, contemporary issues, we get an insight into the turmoil of the lives of ‘ordinary’ teens far removed from the ‘glossy’ veneers we’re often presented in YA fiction. A Pho Love Story speaks a unique, powerful truth – and brings a breath of fresh air not only to the original but also to the genre as a whole. (Caution: parts of this book will make you extremely hungry!)

Who doesn’t like to eat something yummy? But do you ever think about how this food came about? The serendipitous events that led to the creation of a favourite snack – nachos – begin with a Mexican boy, Ignacio Anaya. He loved to eat and cook and was nicknamed . . . Nacho. One day, when asked to create a snack at short notice at a restaurant, Ignacio used whatever he had to hand – corn tortillas, cheddar cheese, and jalapeño peppers. His creation soon became a favourite, and now global, snack – nachos. This delicious true story will inspire young readers to create spontaneously with whatever ingredients are available, and to discover how being inventive in the kitchen, just like this young chef, can be heaps of fun!

This was a feel-good read about a 3-generation rivalry between two sisters in a small town involving fried chicken. (You cannot go wrong with southern food in a novel, I’m just saying.)

What I thoroughly enjoyed about this book was how the plot got thicker and thicker, revealing the backstory throughout the story in a way that made me #TeamAmanda one minute and #TeamMae the next. I like digging deep into a character’s life, and this one did so in a way that made me sympathetic to both sisters, rooting for their reunion until the very end.

I’m trying my best not to give away the ending…suffice it to say; it helped me reframe my thinking around getting to the heart of a long feud that started before you even got here.

One of the main characters in this book, the love interest actually, is on a quest to make the perfect chicken broth. Not art, exactly, but an act of creation. The multiple iterations and the constant tweaking of the recipe comprise a deep dive into an artist’s process as they strive to make the most perfect version of the thing in their head. That thing could be a painting, or a novel, or in this case, broth. This isn’t the main storyline, but it’s a significant side story and an indication of the author’s off-kilter take on space opera. All set in an imaginative world and the creative crucible of a high-end restaurant. Bonus points for the found family and community elements.

This book is powerful to me because of the intense mother/daughter conflict she relates. My mother was lovely, well-read, and held an important position at our state university. However, she was also extremely critical of her children. Because I never rebelled against my mother, I was entranced with Joanne Harris’ young character, Framboise, who plans and carries out a rebellion against her mother that is worthy of the French resistance. Many years later, when Framboise Simon returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, the locals do not recognize her as the daughter of the infamous woman they hold responsible for a tragedy during the German occupation.

The past and present are inextricably entwined in a scrapbook of recipes and memories that Framboise inherited from her now-deceased mother. The journal contains the key to the tragedy that indelibly marked that summer of her ninth year. The mother… show more.