Children’s literature expectedly seeks to describe the daily life of a child, in which gastronomic images often have a certain set of symbolic and social meanings. Consideration of images of food in works for children and adolescents through the prism of contemporary literary theories makes it possible to fit the motif of food, which includes, among other things, rituals of eating and cooking, into a broader cultural context. The article analyzes the works of American writers L.M. Alcott, F.H. Burnett and L. Ingalls Wilder, written in the second half of the XIX - early XX century and constituting classics of English-language children’s literature. The study of images of food in semiautobiographical works of American writers about girls and for girls, which include the novels of Alcott, Burnett and Ingles-Wilder, is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, in works for teenagers, food acts as a social marker, and the ability to cook it indicates the entry into adulthood. Secondly, each of the works presents various ways of interacting with other cultures, including via gastronomic issues, which, in accordance with the tasks of adolescent literature, questions the role of significant adults who support the child in getting acquainted with a new culture or insist on preserving their own.