"Celebrating the richness of growing up biracial, the story does a good job of pointing out the similarities shared between Romina's two cultures. "Chutney is a lot like salsa," she concludes after watching her dad select and mix all the ingredients for his chutney recipe - an observation that goes well beyond cuisine."

"When writing Romina's Rangoli, I struggled with wanting to make the story simple enough to engage and entertain very small children, while at the same time trying NOT to promote the kind of simplistic thinking that reduces "culture" to food and holidays - i.e., Romina is Indian and Mexican, so that means she makes rangoli designs and papel picado!  I have often wondered whether Romina's craft project isn't too pat, too simple of an ending.  But in a society that still tells us, most of the time, to "Check only one box," the very fact that we multi-ethnic folks actually exist is news to many children.  Hopefully, as children get older, they will begin to explore with intellectual rigor the subtle complexities of what "culture" means in people's lives, and how various cultural influences converge in family life."

"My mother is a fabulous cook. She is 100% Italian and I think of her as a food artist because her creative juices really flow in the kitchen. I literally grew up in the kitchen doing the "kids jobs" mentioned in my book like drawing in the flour and licking the spoons and learning the "grown-up jobs" like chopping, stirring and sautéing. My girls are 3 years old and 3 months old and they are growing up in the kitchen with me too. My creative muse is food and it often inspires my writing."

"Picture books by definition tell part of the story through pictures, so I try to pick out parts that can be expanded upon to tell a deeper or funnier story by "reading" the illustrations. For example, in Cora Cooks Pancit, I added a dog to the illustrations who wasn't mentioned at all in the text. He follows around the main character and keeps bringing more and more toys hoping the little girl will play with him. She ignores the dog all the way through the book, until the very end when she's lying on the floor playing tug of war with the dog. I don't draw only what the text says for picture books, but novels are a bit different. In a novel, the whole story is told in the text and the illustrations usually just show the action or feeling of what's already told."