Nacho's Nachos

Review
By Booklist

In this debut picture book, Nickel tells the tale of an orphan who accidentally creates one of the most popular dishes in the world. Ignacio Anaya—Nacho for short—lived with a foster mother at the turn of the century. For snacks, she’d toast corn tortillas with cheese inside until they were crispy on the outside and melted on the inside. In the 1940s, a grown-up Nacho had a knack for making people smile, and he worked at a lively club near the U.S.-Mexico border. One day, a well-known chef named Mamie Finan asked him to bring her and her friends something new. Channeling his foster mother, Nacho improvised, topping fried corn tortillas with cheese and a pickled jalapeño pepper. Mamie’s party couldn’t get enough of Nacho’s special, and word spread around town—the rest is history. This tale of the humble origins of nachos, bolstered by vivid and period-specific illustrations, will whisk young readers away to a different time and place.