**Update:** First of all, Amazon is now showing a discount price of $15.64. This is a steal. This book is worth way more than $15.64. It is worth $16. Second, there’s a description of the book on my publisher’s site, which I’ll excerpt below.
People keep asking me who my publisher is, and it looks like they’ve decided to call it HMH, or Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This is quite a mouthful, but it could be worse. They could have called it Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and World.
Do you feel sorry for the people whose names get left behind in publishing mergers? Like Row of Harper & Row, or Brace and Jovanovich? Mifflin just dodged a bullet, which is a pretty impressive, since he died in 1921.
Oh, incidentally, this means Hungry Monkey comes from the same publisher that brought you Curious George. (Not to mention _The God Delusion_.)
Here’s the scoop:
> Matthew Amster-Burton was a restaurant critic and food writer long before he and his wife, Laurie, had Iris. Now he’s a full-time, stay-at-home Dad and his experience with food has changed…a little.
> Hungry Monkey is the story of Amster-Burton’s life as a food-lover–with a child. It’s the story of how he came to realize that kids don’t need puree in a jar or special menus at restaurants and that raising an adventurous eater is about exposure, invention, and patience. He writes of the highs and lows of teaching your child about food–the high of rediscovering how something tastes for the first time through a child’s unflinching reaction, the low of thinking you have a precocious vegetable fiend on your hands only to discover that a child’s preferences change from day to day (and may take years to include vegetables again). Sharing in his culinary capers is little Iris, a budding gourmand and a zippy critic herself–who makes hug sandwiches, gobbles up hot chilis, and even helps around the kitchen sometimes.
> A memoir on the wild joys of food and parenting and the marvelous mélange of the two–Hungry Monkey takes food enthusiasts on a new adventure in eating (with dozens of delicious recipes!). In the end, our guide reminds us: “Food is fun, and you get to enjoy it three times a day, plus snacks!”
Congratulations Matthew!
Thanks Lauren!
I’ll dust the Naughty Chair at once!
Oh yeah! But where’s the cover? It’s fantastic, and I want everyone to see it.
hey, that’s so fab. Will Iris autograph it for us?
Yay – Congratulations!
So where’s the Kindle version?
Woo hoo!!!!
Congratulations! Can’t wait to read it.
Neil, I’m sure there will be a Kindle version.
Thanks for the plaudits, everyone. Cover will be up very soon.
Hi, maybe you’ve said this already, but does the book have new content in it? By this I mean, if I have read all your blog entries/articles for the past couple years, will I pretty much have read the book, or no?
Daphne, a totally fair question. I’d say it’s about 75 percent new content.
Well done Matthew! You must be very excited and proud!
If I ever had a child I imagine it would feel like this.
We are all hungry monkeys. Congratulations, Matthew!
How am I supposed to judge this book with no cover? Am I to rely on your sheer good looks and wit alone?
I am definitely looking forward to this… raising our own foodies here.