Budding gardeners who love to cook will find a treasure trove of information here.
Hengel encourages middle-grade readers to grow and cook their own food.
A compilation of Hengel’s six books about growing and cooking with basil, carrots, green beans, leaf lettuce, potatoes and tomatoes, the formatted sections make it easy for readers to find the information they need to succeed in both growing and cooking with these foods—though it does also make for some repetition of information. Each section includes spreads about the focus plant and its variations, the conditions it needs and how to sow the seeds, its stages of growth, harvesting the plant and a Q-and-A page. These informational pages are followed by five to six recipes (minus nutritional information and sometimes the colored circles that outline the numbered steps), including Creamy Carrot Soup, Tasty Thai Noodles & Basil, Sassy Citrus Zest Beans, Sort-of Sushi Rolls, Cheddar Potato Cakes and Tomato Pie in the Sky. Three safety symbols used on the recipe pages alert chefs to sharp tools, hot materials and nuts. Extensive frontmatter includes a three-spread pictorial guide to cooking terms, three more spreads featuring an alphabetized pictorial list of ingredients (fish sauce, blue cheese and horseradish among them!), and two spreads of labeled kitchen tools. A URL directs readers to Abdo Publishing’s website for more informational websites (eHow among them) and Burpee’s online seed catalog.
Budding gardeners who love to cook will find a treasure trove of information here. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8-13)Pub Date: March 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-938063-42-8
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Scarletta Press
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote...
Two republished tales by a Greco-Cherokee author feature both folkloric and modern elements as well as new illustrations.
One of the two has never been offered south of the (Canadian) border. In “Coyote Sings to the Moon,” the doo-wop hymn sung nightly by Old Woman and all the animals except tone-deaf Coyote isn’t enough to keep Moon from hiding out at the bottom of the lake—until she is finally driven forth by Coyote’s awful wailing. She has been trying to return to the lake ever since, but that piercing howl keeps her in the sky. In “Coyote’s New Suit” he is schooled in trickery by Raven, who convinces him to steal the pelts of all the other animals while they’re bathing, sends the bare animals to take clothes from the humans’ clothesline, and then sets the stage for a ruckus by suggesting that Coyote could make space in his overcrowded closet by having a yard sale. No violence ensues, but from then to now humans and animals have not spoken to one another. In Eggenschwiler’s monochrome scenes Coyote and the rest stand on hind legs and (when stripped bare) sport human limbs. Old Woman might be Native American; the only other completely human figure is a pale-skinned girl.
Though usually cast as the trickster, Coyote is more victim than victimizer, making this a nice complement to other Coyote tales. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-833-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Gleefully providing ammunition for snarky readers eager to second-guess misguided beliefs and commands of grown-ups, Rondina dishes up the straight poop on dozens of topics from the cleanliness of a dog’s mouth and the relationship (none) between French fries and acne to whether an earwig could really crawl into your ear and eat your brains. Since she cites no readily checkable sources—support for assertions comes in the form of quotations from experts in various fields, but there is no bibliography—it’s hard to tell how accurate some of her claims are—it would be nice to have a citation to the JAMA studies that debunk the sugar-hyperactivity connection, for instance—and too often she provides only an unsatisfying “You Decide” instead of a clear “True” or “False.” Still, it all makes painless reading equally suitable for casual dipping or reading straight through, and Sylvester’s pen-and-ink spot art adds further light notes to every page. An extensive closing catalog of familiar “Parentisms”—“I’m not running a taxi service,” “Because I said so, that’s why,” etc.—adds a chuckle-inducing lagniappe. (Informational ephemera. 9-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55453-454-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
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