In the Kitchen with the March Sisters

Summer calls for big, juicy books—and tasty recipes to go with them.

Little Women offers plenty of sublime summer reading. And it’s full of food.

There’s nothing quite like the bliss of a joyful, lazy summer—and all the reading the slower pace makes room for. It’s the perfect time for kids to crack open a big, challenging, and rewarding novel and completely lose themselves in all the unforgettable characters and adventures. That may be why I have recently been thinking a lot again of one of my all-time favorites, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

This week, I talk with authors who loved the book enough that they wrote their own books inspired by it: Joy McCullough, a co-author of the recently released Great or Nothing, a young-adult reimagining of Little Women, and Jenne Bergstrom and Miko Osada, who together wrote The Little Women Cookbook: Novel Takes on Classic Recipes from Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, and Friends.

Read on for some of their insights about the unforgettable March sisters, the inevitable talk of food all this leads to, and a simple but sublime recipe for the sort of elegant raspberry ice cream that would thrill everyone at the March table.