A MOOSE BOOSH

Continuing the food themes from his picture-book illustration debut in Jacqueline Briggs Martin’s Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table (2013), Larkin here makes his authorial debut.

In 40-plus energetic poems, Larkin celebrates the good and decries the bad in the food world. Though individual poems might seem like amuse-bouches by themselves, they add up to a full meal, and the volume as a whole serves up a lively conversation about food. The collection takes a few jabs at the food industry. One poem laments the “small food desert in Harlem,” and another describes Ashley, who will only eat foods she can spell (and therefore can’t eat bread that contains azodicarbonamide). Grampa complains that there are “[t]oo many people touching my food” (referring to packers and shippers, processors and pickers, inspectors, store guys and baggers). It also encourages planting gardens, eating meals together and enjoying good food such as noodles: “Twirl them, whirl them, / slop them, slip them, / twist them, curl them, / whip them, flip them.” And if the poems’ rhythms don’t always roll off the tongue as easily as those noodles slide off a fork, the overall effect of the poetry and the mixed-media, graffiti-style art (inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat) is exuberant: “Where there is food, there will be laughter (and crumbs).”

A kid-friendly companion to Michael Pollan’s Food Rules (2011).