Author Interview with Daniel Gercke

Are you ready to have something good to eat?
A sandwich? A snack? A delicious treat?
Author Interview with Daniel Gercke
Find recipes with Dr. Seuss in this book
Now get in the kitchen! It’s time to cook!

Reprinted from Cook It! The Dr. Seuss Cookbook for Kid Chefs. Copyright © 2022 by Daniel Gercke. Photographs copyright © 2022 by Christopher Testani. The artwork that appears was first published in various books by Dr. Seuss. Published by Random House Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

What can you create with a recipe, kitchen tools and fresh ingredients? You can use these items along with your reading, math and science skills to create your own food that is yummy and good for you.

The secret ingredient for everything? You’ve already got it right between your ears with a giant handful of imagination!

Quench your thirst—like a Yink—with a Pink Ink Drink! Carve a Roast Beast—like the Grinch—at a holiday meal? Say “Yes, thank you, I WOULD like to try Green Eggs and Ham”?

Author Daniel Gercke creates an adventure in making delicious food with “Cook It! The Dr. Seuss Cookbook for Kid Chefs.”

His recipes are almost as much fun to read as they are to make! Created specifically for children to use with adults, the text is partially written in rhyme and illustrated throughout with cheerful Seussian-inspired photographs by acclaimed photographer Christopher Testani, and classic artwork from 21 different books by Dr. Seuss. Sturdy lay-flat binding makes it easy to use in the kitchen!

Get ready to use all your skills and get cooking, kid chefs!

How did you get started writing?

I started writing stories and poems when I was little. Writing and reading threw open the door to a secret world that was more colorful and exciting than my basement bedroom. If I could write a thing down it was only one (largish) step from being real.

How did you get started cooking?

We only cooked on holidays in my house, so as a kid I learned to cook the most basic things like ramen and cheeseburgers. But in college I worked as a day care aide, and some days the head teacher and I would make food with our class of 5-year-olds. Kids are the funniest, most inquisitive and creative sous-chefs in the world, and it was such a great experience that I started getting more and more interested in food. So I guess it was those 5-year-olds who taught me to cook.

Favorite author/s as a kid?

Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak started me on the road to being a lifetime book fanatic. After that there were C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, L. Frank Baum’s Oz, and Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea to explore. All my favorite authors imagined fantastical places so thoroughly that some warm, human part of themselves lived there eternally.

Favorite book/s as a kid?

I adored Seuss’s wobbly lines, Leo Lionni’s colors, and Sendak’s anarchy. But actually when I was little I thought all books were just parts of a bigger story, and each book was just a chapter of it. My favorite book was Books.

What subjects interested you in school?

I fell in love with language arts and visual arts because they helped me describe the world, which, without them, seemed kind of big and blobby. Later on I got into geometry and the sciences for the same reason. They helped me learn the best rules to break.

Author Interview with Daniel Gercke, Dr. Suess, Kids Discover, Kid Chefs

What is a piece of advice/encouragement you got from a teacher or mentor?

It took me a long time to figure out a college major, and one of my favorite professors told me, Everything that sparks you now will help you later. Don’t worry about trying to figure it out, because you never know what you’ll need in the future (besides a hover car, obviously).

What do you read now?

I get cravings, and my brain pounces all sorts of things at the bookstore. Right now I’m reading about the 17th-century poet John Donne, and before that it was a book about the science of animal perception, and before that I read all of George Eliot’s novels, in order. Also, comic books.

A favorite chef/cookbook?

Marcella Hazan’s Marcella’s Italian Kitchen was one of my foundational learning experiences, but Melissa Clark’s wonderful cookbooks are the ones I use the most. That’s only partly because she’s my wife. As the family bread baker I have learned tons from Ken Forkish (Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast) and Melissa Weller (A Good Bake). Their recipes are challenging, fun, and reliable, and miracles to me. Author Interview with Daniel Gercke

How can kids get excited about reading and recipes?

I think kids get excited about reading books that help them transform their world. A bipedal party cat tells you the secrets of rainy-day fun. There are wild things out there, but you can tame them if you need to. Likewise, a good cookbook lets you know it’s okay to get your hands in some goo and transform it into something that’s yummy to you. Once a child learns they can change the world around them either by learning about it or making something out of it, they get very jazzed.

How can kids get excited about cooking?

Kids love to do things they have seen adults doing, especially if it results in cookies. Every kid spends their first few years passively being served foods they may not have chosen. They learn what they do and don’t like, and yet peas and broccoli show up on their plates anyway. So if they get a chance to set the menu by making it themselves, that’s a desirable outcome. A kitchen, with all the knives and burners, can be a scary place, but even the littlest kid can learn to cut a strawberry with a plastic knife. Give ‘em some rules and get ‘em in there.

Who is someone from the past, or present time, you would like to have a conversation with?

I do that all the time, isn’t that just called reading? I suppose I’d like to chat with Cervantes about how he learned to time a joke so perfectly.

What was the inspiration for “Cook It!” for young readers?

“Cook It!” sprang from my experiences teaching 5-year-olds to cook, both as a teacher in my twenties, and as a father in my forties (and the 20-year career in children’s publishing in between). My daughter was not all that interested in making her own food until we said she could use a (plastic) knife. Then she lit up – she can be kind of macabre. Mainly I wanted to help kids become confident in their own kitchens. A lot of that comes from opening up conversations with their caregivers about what’s okay and what’s not okay to do, and then just having fun with a recipe.

What made you decide to put recipes together with Dr. Seuss?

The editors of the Dr. Seuss books asked me to create a new cookbook using the classic characters. Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, wrote wonderful foodies – besides Sam-I-Am and his green eggs and ham, the Cat In The Hat is a bit of a cake obsessive, and of course the Who’s can’t do without Roast Beast. “One Fish Tuna Fish,” “Guac In Socks,” and “Eggs Oobleck” were crying out to be invented. The book sort of wrote itself from there.

How did you work with an illustrator to put the book together?

The illustrations are Dr. Seuss originals, so in most cases a recipe is based on an illustration. Mr Brown from Hop On Pop, for example, is upside down, so I created Downside-Up muffins so the poor fellow could eat. There’s a Cat Hat Parfait that looks just like the Cat’s hat when the child is done making it. On the other hand, I wanted the food to be healthy and delicious, so I made the eggs and ham green with vegetables rather than getting the exactly look with food coloring.

What do you hope readers take away from your book?

I hope my readers have fun and feel confident. I hope Dr. Seuss inspires them to read, and that the recipes get them to cook and think up their own ideas. It’s all about that confidence. After all, a chef is a chef, no matter how small. Author Interview with Daniel Gercke

What’s coming up next for you?

Right now I’m working on a book about competitive running in middle age. Possibly less interesting for kids, but maybe they’ll help cheer me on.

Author Interview with Daniel Gercke Kids Discover Kids Discover Online