July 24, 2025 By Maria
Tea. My family all know that I love tea. I started drinking black tea with milk as a teenager. On a trip to England, I was introduced to British tea and that was the end of that. No more weak Lipton Tea for me ever again. Tea has been my preferred drink for many years, but my husband is starting to turn me over to coffee with his impressive new coffee making skills. One thing tea has that coffee doesn’t seem to have, at least in literature, is the power to unite and bring people together. I haven’t read too many children’s books that talk about the unifying power of coffee. Tea, however, seems to do the trick again and again, at least in books.
What better way to bring people together than with a tea party? Translated from Japanese, Tea Party in the Woods by Akiko Miyakoshi is a sweet story somewhat reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood, but without any malicious wolves. While traveling through the woods to bring a pie to her grandmother’s house, a little girl is invited to an animal tea party. The kind animals give the girl a warm welcome and assist her with the accidentally squished pie she was bringing to grandma. Afterwards they accompany the girl on the rest of her journey. The tea party brought this large group of animals together in a harmonious community.
In Luli and the Language of Tea by Andrea Wang, Luli connects all the kids in her mixed language daycare class with a pot of tea. Before Luli shared tea with her classmates, the children were always quiet, not knowing how to communicate since they all spoke different languages. The similarity of the word for tea in so many languages is what inspired the author, and it is so beautiful to see all the kids understanding the significance of the tea shared together. The endnotes tell about tea customs across the world and the end pages show international teacup designs. One thing that draws my attention over and over again is the unifying ability of tea. I always love stories, children and adult fiction, that show this.
In Cloud Monkey Tea, people are not brought together to share tea, but tea saves and brings a girl and her mother together. This lovely book by Elspeth Graham and Mal Peet is a very different story than the rest of the books here. This story could stand alone with a whole essay devoted to it. To me, this is a book of enough. It has just enough hardship and realness and just enough hope and magic.
Magic and hope are found in The Gift from Saint Nicholas by Dorothea Lachner. It is a Christmas story, but it is also a beautiful story of a community surrounding the comfort of a large pot of tea. In a village plagued by snowstorm after snowstorm, the people have stopped bothering to shovel and the snow has now divided the village, separating them all from each other. No one is going out and everyone is lonely in their homes. Two children make a wish to Saint Nicholas to bring everyone together and Saint Nicholas does just that with a mysterious package, that eventually leads to a cozy gathering of villagers in Grandfather Gregor’s warm kitchen all sharing a generous tea together.
Tea has brought my kids and I together many times. When they were smaller, I used to make a pot of mint tea and set out cookies and teacups for them. While they were occupied with the novelty of drinking from teacups and eating cookies, I would take that as a perfect opportunity for a read aloud. I would usually read poetry or short stories during teatime, unless we had a longer novel I was reading aloud. I always enjoy sitting down to a cup of tea with my family and friends. I also love a solitary and quiet cup of tea now and then, especially in early mornings or as a break in the afternoon. If one of my kids catches me brewing tea, they usually ask, “May I have a cup, too?”
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