In her first picture book, TV personality and self-esteem advocate Emme and her husband, Phillip Aronson, celebrate everything you need to feel warm, safe, happy, and satisfied—in other words, just right! Sometimes it might be a yummy treat, like pizza, but other times it might be a birthday party or a cuddle with your dog on a rainy afternoon.
Bold, playful illustrations follow a one-of-a-kind narrator as she hungers for different kinds of treats throughout the day- until she finds the special one that ALWAYS hits the spot. So what are you hungry for?
I was so thrilled to write What Are You Hungry For? because it is in direct relation to my life's work. I am ever curious as to how to make change happen for the better. Daily, I speak boldly about body diversity and the need for education about what body types exist naturally. I stand up and challenge the commonly held beauty ideals; I publicly debunk the 50 billion dollar diet industry for making food an outrageously horrendous issue that has forever changed the way we relate to it.
I have always said that our children are our future. As the mother of five year old daughter, I want to do my best to give her the tools that will help her to be the best that she can be, not a fabrication of what others want her to be. I want her to grow up feeling confident in her own body, and not wish it were someone else's. I want her to eat when she is hungry, and speak about her emotions when she feels the need to.
Herein I find a wonderful opportunity for positive reinforcement. Before children are exposed to the millions of mixed messages waiting for them in mass culture as they turn 4 or 5, books like What Are You Hungry For? can provide a good emotional base to question some of the issues. Statistics show that 80% of women (think of all the mothers included in this equation!) are unhappy with their bodies, and we are learning that many men are confronting the same issues about body image as well! Now ask yourself…how is all of this being translated at home around the dinner table?
I see a real opportunity to open a child's eyes to the many ways one can be hungry...showing both the emotional and the nutritional aspects of hunger instead of the emotional and nutritional aspects of food. I believe that What Are You Hungry For? will be a breath of fresh air for a parent and child, one that will help spark conversation about emotional hunger and nutritional hunger; topics that, in my opinion, are not generally discussed with much success.
