Happy ebook birthday to The Little Boy Who Wouldn’t Eat Cheesecake by Christina Myers illustrated by Katherine Carver!
I connected with Christina through a #PB event on Twitter and Instagram. She is a beautiful soul who inspires me immensely. When she contacted me about her picture book launch, I was elated to be part of the team to help get this beautiful story out there. Plus, my boys have also never wanted to try cheesecake because they find the concept for this dessert rather odd—this book was the perfect alignment.
The following is a description of the story as seen on Amazon.
While World War II is changing the world in major ways, a young boy named Roger finds himself in a different kind of fight—a battle within himself—as he tries to muster up the courage to sample a bite of cheesecake. Yes, that’s right, cheesecake. You see, Roger can’t understand how cheese, regularly eaten in his favorite grilled sandwiches, could possibly taste good in cake. He is quite disturbed that others not only find this oddity acceptable but also say it’s delicious.
The Little Boy Who Wouldn’t Eat Cheesecake inspires picky eaters and young readers, ages 4-9, to try new things and encourages conversation with older family members and friends about foods they didn’t like in childhood (or, at least, thought they didn’t like) and what happened when they actually tried the foods for themselves.
Here are Christina’s very own special words and inspiration behind the making of The Little Boy Who Wouldn’t Eat Cheesecake. It’s filled with history, family perspective, and faith.
This story has literally been fourteen to eighty years in the making. In 2006, I first met with Katherine, my craft assistant, and through our conversations on trying new things I shared this story of my father-in-law, as a boy during World War 2, with his own inner battle. When I thought about the artwork for this story, I wanted it to represent diversity. Katherine, only nineteen at the time, had a savant like brilliance and was extremely focused on her drawings and their historical accuracy. She brought in her lovely designs each week and gave them to me to use, but they were not what I had in mind at the time. I greatly loved and appreciated her artwork, and placed the pictures in a non-published book for our family; the book sat on a coffee table all these years, tugging at my heart. I had already placed Psalm 34:8 (ESV) at the end and wanted readers to feel encouraged.
Last fall, I felt this prompting by God to try again. I woke up early in the morning with this impressing that the book was so much more than trying new things or eating Cheesecake; it was about having a preconceived notion challenged and overcome and in a spiritual sense, as well. The publication date was originally set for early February, but due to COVID-19 concerns, we postponed.
Now, with recent events of racial injustice (sadly, not really recent and going on for far too long) I believe the timing–God’s timing–is odd but right, even though it may seem off in the natural with its cast of characters and Southern setting. Trusting God’s divine timing through a global pandemic, a nation divided and a hurting economy for this book to encourage young readers and their parents to taste and see that the LORD is good. ~Christina Myers, The Little Boy Who Wouldn’t Eat Cheesecake
