Despite obvious curricular connections, this one’s a miss.
Books about the USDA’s nutrition standards regarding healthy eating are universally bland. This is no exception.
When Jack (yes, that one) climbs the beanstalk to the giant’s land, instead of threatening his life, Waldorf invites Jack to have a healthy meal with him. Double-page spreads introduce the food groups—vegetable, fruit, grain, protein and dairy; huge (to Jack) labeled examples of the foods fill the pages. Zofia, Waldorf’s wife, arrives in time to share the meal with them. Only in these final few pages is the new MyPlate program introduced: “So it’s healthy to fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables?” “Right! The other half has grains and protein foods.” “Help yourself to a serving of dairy too!” Their meal ends with some suggestions for exercise (though the USDA MyPlate graphic takes away the visual of a figure climbing the food pyramid). The MyPlate image appears in the backmatter, along with a few more tips for healthy eating, a page of foods that have “empty calories” and a few exercise ideas. Leedy combines humor with (mostly) easily identifiable foods, making this a book that kids can participate in reading. But there is a strange mix of cartoon and real—Zofia’s plate contains a cartoon fruit salad and cooked crab alongside collaged-in salad and rice, and a piece of corn bread that is an odd mixture of both. The need to confine intake to one MyPlate per meal goes unsaid.
Despite obvious curricular connections, this one’s a miss. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2602-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts.
In this latest slice in the Food Group series, Humble Pie learns to stand up to a busy friend who’s taking advantage of his pal’s hard work on the sidelines.
Jake the Cake and Humble Pie are good friends. Where Pie is content to toil in the background, Jake happily shines in the spotlight. Alert readers will notice that Pie’s always right there, too, getting A-pluses and skiing expertly just behind—while also doing the support work that keeps every school and social project humming. “Fact: Nobody notices pie when there’s cake nearby!” When the two friends pair up for a science project, things begin well. But when the overcommitted Jake makes excuse after excuse, showing up late or not at all, a panicked Pie realizes that they won’t finish in time. When Jake finally shows up on the night before the project’s due, Pie courageously confronts him. “And for once, I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.” The friends talk it out and collaborate through the night for the project’s successful presentation in class the next day. John and Oswald’s winning recipe—plentiful puns and delightful visual jokes—has yielded another treat here. The narration does skew didactic as it wraps up: “There’s nothing wrong with having a tough conversation, asking for help, or making sure you’re being treated fairly.” But it’s all good fun, in service of some gentle lessons about social-emotional development.
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780063469730
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This lacks the information of other nonfiction titles and the pizzazz of April Pulley Sayre’s Go, Go, Grapes! (2012), but it...
The prolific Gibbons tackles fruits—how they grow, their parts, and what portions we eat.
Beginning with facts about perennial and annual fruits and how many servings children should aim for each day, the book then looks at how fruits can grow on plants, bushes, vines, and trees. Good vocabulary is introduced and defined along the way—botanist, pollination, cultivated. The middle of the book is taken up by individual looks at 13 different kinds of fruits that show cutaway views labeled with parts, the whole plant/bush/vine/tree, and some of the popular varieties—for grapes, golden muscat, red flame, and concord. This is followed by a discussion of growing seasons and climates, large farms versus backyard ones, harvesting fruit and getting it to market, and some other fruits that were not featured in the text, including star fruits, apricots, and persimmons. A final page lists more fruit facts and two websites (one for the United States, one for Canada) about food guidelines. The text sometimes gets lost in Gibbons’ busy and full pages, and while her illustrations are detailed and specific for each type of fruit, the watercolors won’t make mouths water.
This lacks the information of other nonfiction titles and the pizzazz of April Pulley Sayre’s Go, Go, Grapes! (2012), but it may be just the ticket before a school trip to a farm. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3204-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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