A clever, positive take on nutrition that offers pleasant advice and entertaining illustrations without the usual...
In this very short debut guide to fruits and vegetables, Lee offers a colorful way for kids to track their healthy eating.
A host of vegetables address young readers directly in this children’s picture book, recommending that they eat five colors of fruits and vegetables every day, along with meat, fish, bread and milk. On each page, representatives from each color group—red, orange, green, blue/purple and white—explain what makes them special. A tomato, a beet and kidney beans, accompanied by a strawberry and a slice of watermelon, explain that red fruits and vegetables help keep both children and adults healthy. Cabbage, along with green peas, spinach and other foods, claim that green vegetables are good for the eyes and give kids energy. An eggplant instructs a plum, blackberries and grapes on how blue and purple fruits and vegetables enhance memory. Carrots and sweet potatoes, along with their similarly hued fruit friends, suggest that orange fruits and vegetables help build strong bones and teeth, improve the skin and eyes, and may help cuts heal. For the white group, onion and garlic celebrate how they help other foods taste better and keep the heart healthy. There are some missing elements here—including peppers, which come in several colors, and a page for the color yellow, which might have included bananas and squash. A note for parents might have helped explain why certain foods are not mentioned, and what vitamins are associated with each color group. However, Bean’s cartoonish illustrations, featuring vegetables with faces, colored in polka dots, stripes, checks and other patterns, will draw children’s eyes, and an activity to find the tomatoes in a lettuce patch will entertain young readers. An easy-to-photocopy chart could easily go on the refrigerator to help children track the colors they eat every day of the week.
A clever, positive take on nutrition that offers pleasant advice and entertaining illustrations without the usual admonitions to avoid unhealthy foods.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-1412076746
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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