Medea and
her family at
home earlier
this year.
Clockwise
from far left:
Shanaz with
baby “Luka”
and Brandon;
Reilly and
Jean-Diar;
Esfandiar and
Medea.honey cake. Through imagination, the grand-
mother details how each delicious ingredi-
ent represents a dierent family member
and his or her unique ethnic background.
The first book is a story about accep-
tance and celebrating the backgrounds
that make us unique. Like the spices in a
honey cake, our dierent flavours blend
together to create the single beautiful en-
tity that is humanity. At the end of the
book, there is a recipe for readers to follow
so they can make their own honey cake.
This book has many dierent meanings,
but above all, I view it as a recipe for life,
because it teaches all about diversity and
multiculturalism. The main message of
the book is that it doesn’t matter where you
come from or what colour your skin is—we
are all a part of one race, and that’s the hu-
man race. We are all one!
The rest of the books in the series focus
on dierent messages as taught to Nala by
dierent family members. For example, the
second installment is called Honeycake:
Help, I Swallowed a Butterfly. It’s all about
how to deal with anxiety. Nala is at school,
and she’s nervous about presenting in
front of the class. The teacher assures her
that she just has butterflies in her tummy.
But because she’s a young girl, Nala doesn’t
understand what that means, so she runs
home and tells her mom that she’s swal-
lowed a butterfly. Through this anecdote,
my second book teaches children the first
steps of meditation and breathing exercises,
and how to visualize positive outcomes.
The remaining books in the Honeycake
series teach kindness, trust and gratitude.
The biggest challenge I had to face when
writing these books was fear, the fear of
failing to be precise. Thankfully, my books
have been welcomed with open arms and
I’ve received such positive feedback. I’m
beyond grateful and so happy to see that my
positive messages are making an impact.
The one piece of advice I have to oer to
new writers is to be passionate about what
you’re writing, and be authentic and true
to yourself. After all, isn’t that what we all
should be striving for in life?