Bee-Bim Bop !

Bee-Bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park is a book about the Korean dish bibimbap. Throughout the book, a small Korean-American girl is shown helping to prepare her favorite dish, bee-bim bop. At the supermarket, she helps her mother find the ingredients bee-bim bop needs. At home, she helps her mother prepare the meal and then she helps her mother set the table. After helping with everything, the main character gets to sit down and enjoy the meal with her family.
I love eating bibimbap, so I was immediately drawn to this book. I liked how the author provided a bee-bim bop recipe at the end that came with cooking instructions that are meant for young readers. The cooking instructions specify that they are for the young reader and a grownup to do together, as opposed to providing a recipe for just the child’s guardian. The child has cooking instructions that they should follow, such as putting oil into a frying pan and then having a grownup put the pan over a medium flame. I found this to be a nice touch to the book.

The authenticity would lead me to use this as a pedagogical tool. The author made sure to simplify the dish’s name for students who do not speak Korean to pronounce. By writing bibimbap as bee-bim bop, the word looks less long and easier for students to read. The author even made sure to provide some background context on bee-bim bop in the author’s note, which can be explained to the students. Students can learn that the dish is very popular in Korea. They can also learn a few Korean words, since the author provides the definition of bee-bim bop. Bee-bim means “mixed up” and “bop” means rice in Korean, so bee-bim bop means mixed-up