AHHH, MILK!

Readers who believe that the popular beverage is solely an animal product are udderly mistaken, as this refreshing overview demonstrates.

Starr and Andrya begin with a gallery of milk-producing creatures, from cows to camels, found everywhere from wild forests to deserts and dairy farms. The survey continues on to rice paddies, fields of oats and soybeans, jungle trees laden with cashews, an orchard of almond trees, and finally coconut groves near sandy beaches. It all serves to underscore what a trip to any grocery store’s dairy section proves—that vegan, vegetarian, and lactose-free alternatives to cow’s milk are widely available now. The subtitle is misleading, since the book lacks information about how these milks are actually “made” except for vague references to pressing and squeezing (for cows) or stripping and threshing (for rice). Aside from glimpses of kitchen blenders and a squeeze bag dripping milk made from nuts, the illustrations are likewise unhelpful. A partial recap at the end that includes additional entries for donkey, moose, water buffalo, and reindeer milk does offer brief comments on each type’s distinctive uses or nutritional value. In Andrya’s pictures, stylized human figures with understated signs of racial and cultural diversity pose in outdoor settings at work or quaffing milk from large glasses with every evidence of satisfaction. “Gulp, gulp, gulp! Ahhh, Milk!”

Sketchy, but required reading for anyone who thinks that milk only comes from mammals.