As often happens when food and community blend together, the result is greater than its ingredients.  Such was the case at the third annual Edible Books Festival, held on the first floor of Ladd Library on April 12.

“The baking was memorable, but coming together with everyone, trying everyone’s different creations and just seeing how everyone interprets different books was a great experience — a celebration overall,” said Isabelle Job ’24 of Wenham, Mass.

(Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

She and Jaden Witte-Schrock ’24 of Niwot, Colo., were part of a student team that created a cake inspired by Chekov. “I loved everyone coming together: staff, students, and professors,” said Witte-Schrock. “I really enjoyed that.”

In terms of its name, the Edible Books Festival doesn’t mince words: It invites the �ֲ���ý community to bake and cook dishes that play off the title or theme of a well-known book.

This year’s event drew 11 entries. Cheryl Lacey, director of �ֲ���ý Dining Services, has been a judge each year. “The creativity this year was off the charts, and there were some hilarious puns.” 

Here are three: 

1. “Lemony Crickets: A Series of Unfortunate Desserts,” inspired by Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, created by festival organizer Hannah Dawkins, a library assistant in access services.
2. “A Pear for Owen Cremini,” inspired by John Iriving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, created by Grey McGloon, also a library assistant in access services.
3. “Tropical Can of Corn,” inspired by Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn, created by Christine Murray, social science librarian. 

This year’s festival drew students from three language courses, including a seminar course taught by Lecturer in Japanese Keiko Konoeda, who created a dish based on their work exploring topics in Japanese literature and food. 

Konoeda suggested that her students participate as a group activity, and that appealed to Ellie Asada ’26, an economics major and Japanese minor from Honolulu. “We were reading poems and children’s books at the time, and this seemed like a perfect way to bond.”

The class drew inspiration from a Japanese children’s picture book based on a poem by Shuntaro Tanikawa, “They Have Died for Me,” which the students translated into English.

“The book is a poem about how animals — beef, fish, and pigs — have died for us, becoming food on our plates,” said Foy Ma ’25 of Beijing, a double major in philosophy and mathematics with a Japanese minor. “It’s a reminder to live gratefully.”

“The poem tells a universal message not specific to Japan,” Konoeda said. “But some may say the spirit of gratitude for the animals that give up their lives is culturally particular”: viewing humans and animals in life together, “unlike seeing humans having dominion over other creatures.”

The dish imitated the dish on the cover of the picture book, including a hamburger patty (“a very common “Western food” dish in Japan,” said Konoeda), atop which the class used ketchup to draw a picture of a cow, plus fried eggs, salmon sushi, and a rice ball.

From students in the German course “Adaptation,” taught by Associate Professor of German Raluca Cernahoschi, came a gingerbread based on the Heidi novels. 

Cernahoschi and her students spent the semester studying how various cultural products — books, movies, etc. — get adapted and reinvented for different cultural purposes, like a novel turned into a film or, for the Edible Books Festival, a Swiss children’s novel turned into a gingerbread house.

“One of the things we studied in the course is how even simple-seeming decisions related to Heidi products have a lot of implications,” said Cernahoschi. 

“This is a lesson in cultural adaptation but also in design,” she added. “As the students considered how to turn Heidi into something edible, they had to grapple with a series of such questions. How can words on a page be translated into food on a plate? What can they expect their audience to know about Heidi and respond to? How can the cultural specificity of the novels, 19th-century Switzerland, be transposed to a 21st-century Maine environment?”

Isabelle Job, Jaden Witte-Schrock, and classmates from their advanced Russian course, taught by Visiting Lecturer in Russian Cheryl Stephenson, created an entry based on Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.

“We made a cake that has a tea blend in it with lemon, rose, lavender, and vanilla, and each of those flavors are associated with a character,” said Job, who is an art and visual culture major with a Russian minor. “And then we put motifs on top with the frosting, and so they all kind of corresponded with each other.”

Witte-Schrock, who is an economics major and Russian minor, said that infusing the cake — which earned the “most-creative” prize — with tea flavors was highly intentional: He and Job are officers of the �ֲ���ý Tea Club. “It was really fun playing with these different flavors. It also felt timely and bright with it being spring and us having flower motifs.”

“My favorite part?” responded Foy Ma when asked the question. “It’s not actually making the food. It’s actually enjoying everyone else’s food! People are really creative and they’re really talented.”

“Thank you all for coming to the library to do work — or eat books,” said Grey McGloon ’21, prompting a ripple of laughter through the crowd gathered for this year’s Edible Books Festival in Ladd Library.

This year’s festival, held April 7, filled three tables near the first-floor circulation desk, prompting Audrey Jennings ’25 of St. Louis to exclaim upon entering the library, “This is the best day ever!”

The festival’s recipe is simple: entrants need only create something edible, sweet or savory, that’s inspired by a book, fiction or nonfiction, to be judged in two categories, artistry and flavor.

Though Anton Chekhov never won a Nobel Prize, he now has an Edible Books top prize for artistry to his credit. After reading The Cherry Orchard this semester, an advanced Russian class paid tribute to the author by creating a chocolate cake with sour cherry compote, decorated with chocolate trees.

“It was our first time reading a full work of Russian literature,” said Grace Acton ’24 of Harvard, Mass. “Very exciting for us.” Lecturer in Russian Cheryl Stephenson baked the cake, and her students decorated it during their 8 a.m. session.

McGloon, a library assistant for access services, organized this year’s edition, and the judges were Cheryl Lacey, director of dining services; Laura Conforte, electronic resources and scholarly communications; Ellie Wolfe ’23 of Northampton, Mass., editor-in-chief of The �ֲ���ý Student.

Library Assistant Perrin Lumbert evoked Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray with The Picture of Durian Gray, which also won a top prize for creativity. It made quite the pungent impression — durian is a divisively popular fruit from Southeast Asia, known for its spiky outer shell and rich odor.

Surrounded by a gold-painted “frame” of lemon-yuzu-durian mini pound cakes, the Giuseppe Arcimboldo-esque portrait made from buttercream frosting, dried durian, lychees, M&Ms, an orange, strawberries, and marshmallows will live on, if only in memory.

Christine Murray, a social science librarian, took inspiration from Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume autobiography, My Struggle, to create My Strudel, which won one of two top prizes for flavor. She admits that she did not struggle with her recipe. “I just followed a recipe that said ‘easy strudel,’ so it might not be a canonical interpretation.”

One of three different Lord of the Rings–inspired entries came from Academic Administrative Assistant Daphne Comeau, who created “The Shirecuterie” board, featuring puff pastry mimicking a hobbit-hole in a hillside of vegetables. 

“I made a whole hobbit-hole door with the Brie container and totally left it on my table on my way out this morning,” she said, but obviously it was delicious enough to secure the second top prize for flavor.

Two other Lord of the Rings entries were a map of Middle Earth made from naan, a soft Indian-style flatbread, by Library Assistant Jennifer Michel, and 11 donuts from the Italian Bakery, one “ring” short of a full dozen, presented by Krystie Wilfong, associate college librarian for collections and scholarly communications.

A dish of “tyrannymisu” came from Humanities Librarian Marianne Williams, inspired by On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. McGloon contributed a Dune-inspired spiced bread “sandworm,” and sugar wafers and graduation cap cookies, from Assistant Director of Sponsored Programs and Research Compliance Theresa Bishop, were inspired by Educated by Tara Westover, 

Finally, from Caitlin Lampman, reference and outreach archivist who won a top prize last year for gingerbread men and mice (inspired by Of Mice and Men) came a sly entry: cheap store-bought sugar cookies, invoking The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.