THE ADVENTURES OF DAISY AND BUSTER

A girl and her dog explore the world in search of tasty food in this debut alphabet book.

Daisy, a blond-haired white girl, and her spotted dog, Buster, go in alphabetical order to various sites, sampling rhyming (rather than native) cuisine. Beginning with “a can of spam in Amsterdam,” the pair visits iconic spots around the globe. In each illustration, Buster asks “When do we eat?” (or something similar) in the language of the place, helpfully included in a glossary at the end. Peyton’s cute, hand-drawn pen, crayon, and marker images feature a range of adventurous activities: racing on a dragon boat in Beijing, hang gliding in Caracas, scuba diving in Grenada, and riding on an elephant in Jaipur, among them. The locations are mostly cities or nations, depending on which names provide the best rhymes for the frequently unfamiliar foods (creamy tiger, cheesy log, and the titular kolache). Each picture in this engaging, informative book features an outline of the location’s country, filled with the colors and patterns of the nation’s flag. The occasional poking fun (Buster uses the phrase “shrimp on the Barbie” in Australia and ends the Canadian line with “eh?”) seems good-natured and intended to be humorous.

Sometimes this clever travel tale feels overly ambitious, but it will send budding geographers to their atlases (or Google) for more details.