I grew up at 17th and Surf in North Wildwood, New Jersey, in a pizza shop named after my grandfather. Johnny's Pizza, Ice Cream & Arcade — striped awning, neon in the window, open air one block from the boardwalk. The counter looked right into the kitchen, so nothing was hidden: my dad Carlo at the ovens, my mom working the counter and making pies, my brothers and sisters and I eating too much and thinking every family lived like this.
My dad eventually sold the shop. Years later my brother John and I opened our own, and named it Carlo's — after our father, the way his father's name had been over the door when we were kids. Three generations, two shops, and the same name going around in a circle.
That's where Baby's First Slice came from. It's a book about pizza the way pizza actually works in a family — not as food, but as the thing that's on the table for the first bite, the beach day, the night before college, the day you meet your own grandchild. I'm a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
No version of this book was complete until I found Kasey, my fiancée.
I don't have kids of my own yet. But I watched my younger brothers and sisters have their first slice, and now I'm watching their kids have theirs. I wrote this book for Carlo James, Zoey Arwyn, Adelaide Cher, Carlo Samuel the Third, and Mary Jean.