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We have a small marble top bakers table handed down from my grandmother, currently living it’s best life a wine table in our dining room… I’ll never look at the chip in the corner as a flaw again! Instead I’ll remember it as the day me grandfather dropped some heavy metal piece of equipment that he should not have had in the house to begin with (according to grandma) and how it caught the corner, chinking the marble on the edge. I remember my grandmother going on about her having just moved her pies from the table to kitchen and how lucky he was that he “did not ruin Lealon’s favorite cherry pie” as she gave me a wink! I have thought many times of replacing that top over the years - and now I never will… 

I know it’s a children’s book and I’ll certainly share it with all my family, but you could go much further into novel territory. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri came to mind as read your story of mealtimes and cooking (Or maybe it was one of her short stories in Interpreters of Maladies…  been a while since I’ve read them… not to compare you based solely on heritage, but the meshing of the two cultures in your writing pulled a comparison in my mind.