What's in the Garden?: Learn Where Food Comes From (Part Cookbook, Part Gardening Book for Kids) - Softcover

Berkes, Marianne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1584691905 ISBN 13: 9781584691907

Publisher: Dawn Publications, 2013

Synopsis

Good food doesn't begin on a store shelf with a box. It comes from a garden bursting with life, color, sounds, smells, sunshine, moisture, birds, and bees! Healthy food becomes much more interesting when children know where they come from. So what s in the garden? Kids will find a variety fruits and vegetables, and a tasty, kid-friendly recipe for each one to start a lifetime of good eating. A food for thought section presents interesting facts about each fruit and vegetable, and a how does your garden grow? section explains facts about gardening and the parts of plants.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

K-Gr 2-Rhythmic poetry gives one-page clues that answer the title question. "It's round. It's tiny. It grows on a bush./When made into sauce, it turns to a mush./This fabulous fruit can be used as a dye,/And is really yummy in muffins and pie." The fresh fruits and vegetables revealed by turning the page are celebrated in vibrant full-color illustrations. Birds and insects also populate these gardens-a slug on celery leaves, a ladybug alighting on a tomato stem in pursuit of aphids, and a crow circling corn plants. Very, very close-up, realistic illustrations show children thoroughly enjoying the garden's bounty-saliva drips onto an apple being crunched, lettuce sticks out of an African American boy's teeth, broccoli drenched in dip fills the mouth of an Asian American boy. There's a recipe for each fruit or vegetable-e.g., garlic mashed potatoes, blueberry pie, and ants on a log. Less-than-precise editing mars some of the recipes, e.g., four cups of peeled potatoes probably should be four potatoes; roasting pumpkin seeds is a lot messier than the recipe lets on, as is creating a lattice top on the blueberry pie. Better editing would also have caught the missing apostrophe in the carrot poem. Four pages for adults are filled with ideas for using the book with children.-Frances E. Millhouser, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library, VAα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

From Booklist:

The predictable answer to the title question? Fruits and vegetables! This attractive introduction to 12 edible plants is intended to stimulate healthy eating among kids. A four-line rhyme poses a question, and the next page provides the answer along with a boxed recipe and an illustration of a child preparing or eating it. For example: “It’s usually brown, way down in the soil. / You scrub it to bake it, or peel it to boil. / It doesn’t have ears, but does have eyes— / It’s really a favorite when mashed or as ‘fries.’” (The recipe that follows is for Garlic Mashed Potatoes.) The realistic, brightly colored paintings depict multicultural children (many missing baby teeth) and use icons for each ingredient. Safety cautions start with the section titled Lets Get Cookin and pick up with the books last two lines: “Try the recipes in this book, / And with a grownup start to cook.” The rhythm in some poems is a bit bumpy, and there is a misuse of the word its. Despite these blips, this should be useful in the classroom as well as at home. Grades K-3. --Julie Cummins

About this edition

• Publisher: Dawn Publications
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1584691905
• ISBN 13: 9781584691907
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Arbo Cris