This well-intentioned but overambitious book has too many ingredients to create a delectable whole.
America’s Test Kitchen presents 26 facts about food and cookery for aspiring chefs.
Designed as a multileveled text intended to grow with its reader and laid out one letter per page, the book first presents a statement in a large typeface: “K is for Kumquats.” A short explanation that “Kumquats are tiny citrus fruits” follows in smaller type, and this is succeeded by a long, expository paragraph in even tinier print. Combined, it makes an overwhelmingly print-heavy page. Writing for young foodies is a tasty concept, but the book’s ingredients don’t quite meld. There are pages among the esoteric mix of food and cooking techniques detailing familiar items such as “oven” or “vanilla,” but too many cover topics far too sophisticated for the audience. Few toddlers will grasp that “Umami” enhances taste or that lox “is cured but not smoked.” Older foodies may appreciate the material but not the board-book format, and all readers may find the clinical tone, like an unbrined turkey, to be a little dry. Digitally collaged illustrations gamely make the subject as much fun as possible, with lively faces plastered on food and utensils and vibrant colors to make the tasty morsels pop. Dashes of wit spice things up, such as a peppermint leaf soaking in a hot mug of water, spa candles and fuzzy slippers at the ready. A simultaneously publishing companion, 123 the Farm and Me, shares both approach and flaws.
This well-intentioned but overambitious book has too many ingredients to create a delectable whole. (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7003-2
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fun, new take on droppings.
Youngsters can learn about where and how various animals, domestic and wild, relieve themselves.
Via a pull-tab embedded in each recto (not, thankfully, in the rectum) readers can see the before and after, and a goldfish in a bowl leaves a trail while swimming. The verso asks each creature where it does its business, and then a (sometimes-forced) rhyming quatrain, translated from Italian, answers the question: “And where do YOU poop, mouse? / When inside my tummy / Starts to feel not so good / It’s time for a poop / On these chips made of wood!” The final double-page spread queries readers: “And where do YOU poop?” A redheaded, White toddler’s face is visible below this question; the pull-tab on the right opens a bathroom to reveal a White toddler, this time with medium brown hair, happily and modestly sitting on a blue toddler potty. The accompanying quatrain provides some developmentally appropriate guidance for feeling the signs of a movement coming on. Baruzzi’s art is droll and graphically clean (inasmuch as the depiction of excrement can be described that way). Little fingers may need some help finding the relatively easy-to-open and sturdy pull-tabs, since they blend into each page. It works as both a biology lesson and potty-training encouragement.
A fun, new take on droppings. (Novelty board book. 18 mos.-3)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66265-042-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: minedition
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Satisfying, engaging, and sure to entertain the toddlers at whom it is aimed.
Nine basic shapes in vivid shifting colors are stacked on pages in various permutations.
This visually striking and carefully assembled collection of shapes, which seems to have been inspired by an Eric Carle aesthetic, invites young children to put their observation, categorization, problem-solving, color, and spatial-relation skills to work, pondering shapes and compositions—and even learning about prepositions in the process. As the text says, “a stack of shapes can make you think and wonder what you see.” First, readers see a circle under a strawberry (the red diamond with a leafy, green top and yellow-triangle seeds) and then that berry over a green square. The orange oval made to look like a fish is added to a stack of three shapes to become “yellow over diamond under guppy over green.” And so on. The metamorphosis of many of these simple shapes into animals (a yellow circle becomes a lion; a green square, a frog; a pink heart, a pig; a yellow diamond, a chicken) will surprise and delight children. Questions are directed at readers: Is a square with two round eyes and semicircle feet a “frog or square or green?” Why, all of the above! The text possesses a pleasing rhythm and subtle rhymes, positively begging to be read aloud: “circle next to berry / square by bear by sweet // blue up high / pig down low / yellow in between.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Satisfying, engaging, and sure to entertain the toddlers at whom it is aimed. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-79720-508-3
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
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