Let’s hear it for the veggies! This cheerful chant pairs pithy couplets with the author’s photographs of farmer’s market beauties.
The staccato rhymes suggest themselves for all sorts of exuberant oration, from simple read-alouds to more orchestrated pageantry, perhaps involving kids as players. (Cauliflower pom-poms, anyone?) Page turns are cleverly used to add further punch to the rhymes: “Lettuce. Lima. Go, green bean! / Cucumber’s cool. Kohlrabi’s queen!” The photographs, as sturdy and delicious as their subjects, occasionally pull off a visual pun: The aforementioned queenly kohlrabies sport crowns of trimmed stalks that indeed lend a regal air. Photos, bordered with thin white lines in offset rectangles, appear against pages of green, gold, eggplant-purple or tomato-red. (Yup, it’s a fruit, but it makes several honorary appearances.) Crisp white type in the serif font “Calvert” adds the right rah-rah touch. The most pleasing aspect about this crunch-fest for parents and caregivers, arguably, is its happy presumption: What kid wouldn’t love to both celebrate and chow down on these fresh and fabulous foods? Indeed, Sayre’s appended a page of facts and suggestions and notes that “No vegetables were harmed or mistreated in the making of this book. Most, however, were later eaten.”
A winning recipe blending crispy verse and fresh photography: Go team! (Picture book. 3-7)
