Luka's Story
A talking cat and Luke's gluten-free diet or celiac disease? No worries!
A talking cat and Luke's gluten-free diet or celiac disease? No worries! is a story of
animals and people for children. It talks about two brothers, Nick and Luke, who
got familiar with the gluten-free diet at an early age because Luke was diagnosed
with the celiac disease. His two years older brother Nick also learned about this
disease, because their parents warned him early on not to give Luke his cookies,
bread and other dishes containing gluten.
Luke enjoyed all the kids’ fun and diet food, and especially liked diet desserts.
They both found them tasty. The boys were growing up. At the age of 5, Nick
started telling different stories about animals and his then 3-year old brother Luke
just nodded and smirked while listening to the stories. As their grandmother and
amateur fine artist, I sensed their joy in creating new stories and started to
encourage them. I wrote down the stories, the children illustrated them and that is
how the stories “Five ducks”, “A Talking Cat” and “Birds and Bread” came to life.
The story A talking cat and Luke's gluten-free diet was created as a continuation of
children’s stories about animals, but this time over a spontaneous conversation
about the celiac disease and Luke’s diet food. Luke said that he is truly proud of
his gluten-free diet, because they take really good care of him at the daycare
center and he is glad that he is not the only one – his friend also has a special
lactose-free diet.
The conversations with the boys were the beginning of creating our story on the
gluten-free diet for children to which we added different illustrations the brothers
are very proud of.
The authors of this picture book, which was printed as part of the LQ-CELIAC
European project activities, were overwhelmed with pride when it was presented
at Luke’s daycare center. Together with their grandmother they read the story to
their friends and then they all together baked a mountain of gluten-free chocolate
cookies.
Because the response from the children, especially children with celiac disease,
was so good, we soon ran out of copies. Therefore, we decided to review and
reprint the booklet under the Focus IN CD (Interreg Central Europe) project and
enable new generations to learn about the celiac disease at an early age.
I hope you will enjoy this picture book and introduce it also to your friends and
then together with your parents, grandmothers and friends bake Luke’s and Nick’s
gluten-free chocolate cookies and prepare Bu’s gluten-free chocolate hedgehogs.
Enjoy your meal!
Grandmother Andreja
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