YA Materials, Literature Log, Book #16: With the Fire on High

Title: With the Fire on High

Author: Elizabeth Acevedo

Category: Realistic Fiction


Emoni is a senior in high school, raising her three-year-old daughter while attending classes and dreaming about becoming a chef after graduation. She's an amazing cook, everyone who tries her food agrees, and she has the talent with tastes needed to do the work. When a class at her high school taught by a professional chef and featuring a class trip to Spain is announced, Emoni has to choose whether she can go - and work harder than ever to be able to afford it


I've read one other novel by Acevedo - The Poet X - and I've loved both stories. Acevedo is skilled at creating realistic characters and stories, and relates them in such an honest, refreshing way. With the Fire on High was a great read, and it made me very hungry with all the talk about food! I think this could be an interesting book to use in a teen program about cooking, as it is such a big part of the story, and I think teens who, like Emoni, love cooking would greatly enjoy something like that.

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