La Baguette Magique

About This Project

La Baguette Magique is the kind of children’s book adults enjoy and learn from too, but it isn’t finished yet..
I am collecting stories about cooking and enjoying bread from around the world which will be bought to life with illustrations by Amy McSimpson in a children’s story and recipe book.

During the E17 Art Trail, June 2017, I will be celebrating the Art and Science of wheat and gathering real stories about breads from different countries and cultures.

Now what better way to share stories than by sharing food?

And what better way to get attention than with a small, colourful field of wheat being paraded up Walthamstow High Street?!

Roving wheat troubadours will be giving out breads and gathering tales while celebrating food and harvest.

These stories and recipes could become part of Ana and Louis’ voyage, and captured in beautiful illustrations by Amy McSimpson.

‘Rolling Rolexs’, also being exhbited in E17 Art Trail venue number 149, is the first tale of many.

The story so far:

Ana and Louis are eating their baguette sandwiches for lunch. Louis was really enjoying his sandwich which had his favourite combination of fillings but being excitable and restless he started banging it on the table as if it was a big drum stick.

Both children are suddenly transported from their own kitchen to another home in France. They meet young Lise who informs the confused pair that they have a ‘Baguette Magique, which in English translated into magic wand. They are lucky to have made this powerful baguette. When they bang it three times on a table they are transported to somewhere else in the world to make friends with other people.

Lise tells them that the word ‘companion’ comes from the Latin word ‘com’ meaning “with” and ‘panis’ meaning “bread”, so a companion is someone you share bread with. As they travel with la baguette magique they will eat bread with many people and meet new friends. Lise shares her wisdom that they must enjoy their adventures; to listen and return others kindness and they will stay safe, but remember, that when the sandwich is finished the magic will end.