Kids in the Kitchen: 100 Delicious, Fun & Healthy Recipes to Cook & Bake

A collection of simple recipes for children to create on their own, many of which require no cooking

Grade 3-5-A beginning, general, vegetarian cookbook written in a "gee whiz" style with numerous exclamation points. The recipes range in difficulty from raisin-bread toast with peanut butter or cream cheese to "Twice-Baked Potatoes," which require both oven and electric mixer operations. After the obligatory safety rules, equipment, terms, and measuring notes (metric is included), the dishes are presented. The arrangement seems rather arbitrary as it may not be immediately clear, for example, what the difference is between "Trail Mixes and More" and "Fruit and Vegetable Snacks." Full-color photographs of the food and of a variety of children cooking accompany the directions. Occasional sidebars relate anecdotes and interesting tidbits. New Junior Cookbook (Meredith, 1989) has a similar format, includes meat, fish, and poultry, and is more straightforward and useful. Angela Wilkes's The Children's Step-by-Step Cookbook (Dorling Kindersley, 1994) is similar to the New Junior but more attractive. Both are for the same audience; either is preferable to Kids in the Kitchen unless a vegetarian cookbook is required.
Carolyn Jenks, First Parish Unitarian Church, Portland, ME
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 3-5. One of the best things about this book is that the photographs picture boys busily working in the kitchenalone as well as side by side with girls. The book's handy tables are another nice featurechildren don't always know how many cups there are in a pint or how many teaspoons in a tablespoon. The recipes include more snack-type items than main dish edibles, but all are generally simple-to-make child pleasers (a few are rather unusual, for example, Summer Specialpeanut butter spread on cabbage leaves and sprinkled with raisins), and because many of the dishes don't require cooking, children can really become kitchen do-it-yourselfers. The book is nicely laid out, with clear directions and color photos of ingredients and finished products in addition to the pictures of kids hard at work. Children with knowledge of basic kitchen terms (scramble, broil) are in for some tasty fun. Stephanie Zvirin