By Aisha Saeed
Bilal's dad puts the daal on in the morning and it cooks all day, and Bilal has to wait — and so do his friends.
Bilal is six, and today it's his turn to help make daal, his favorite food in the world. He and his dad sort the lentils and get the pot going before school. Then his friends come over, and Bilal works out that they've never had daal before, and a small worry starts up in him: what if they don't like it? And the daal takes all day to cook. All day. So the friends play and check the pot and play and check the pot, and by the time it's finally ready everyone is starving, and they eat it, and it's good.
Almost nothing happens in this book except waiting, which sounds like a problem and isn't. A child who hangs at your hip asking is-it-ready-yet while something cooks will recognize every stir and every lift of the lid. Anoosha Syed's pages are bright and round and warm, so it moves fast even though the story is slow on purpose. The quiet work is done by Bilal's small worry that his friends won't like his favorite food. A child who has opened a lunchbox and felt someone peer at it may feel that one from the inside, and the book settles it in about two pages without making a speech. There's a real daal recipe at the back you can cook at home.