A delightful collection of recipes that introduces young cooks to worldly dishes.
This kid-friendly cookbook provides a culinary tour of the globe.
Most cookbooks geared toward children share two common goals: to encourage little ones to eat more adventurously (even if that just means devouring more vegetables) and to empower them to participate in the magical process of turning raw ingredients into a delicious home-cooked meal. Most people with kids will tell parents that it’s best to start simple. Breakfast might be scrambled eggs and toast; lunch could feature a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with sliced fruit; and dinner might star spaghetti with marinara sauce. Without forsaking easy-to-tackle recipes, Tierney goes beyond the standard American starter meals with 44 recipes from around the globe, from Europe and Asia to Africa and beyond. Informed by the author’s own travels, the recipes toggle between the familiar and the refreshingly unique. In the first category, there are Chinese egg rolls, Polish pierogis, and German pretzels. In the second category, there are Filipino yema balls (a chewy dessert made with condensed milk and eggs), South African bobotie (a spiced meat concoction), Kenyan irio (a side dish featuring potatoes, corn, and peas), and Antarctican sledging biscuits (a dense, utilitarian pastry prepared simply from flour, water, baking soda, butter, and salt). Tierney calls bobotie “a pumped-up version of a hamburger casserole.” There’s also a fun interactive element: Readers get a “culinary passport,” complete with stamps meant to accompany each country represented in the book. This engaging work is by no means a comprehensive look at the cuisines of the world. The author’s picks are those of a visitor—albeit a curious one—passing through one destination en route to the next. But by cooking some of the best-known breakfasts, entrees, desserts, and snacks of each continent, young chefs will hopefully be excited to try lesser-known regional fare as they grow up.
A delightful collection of recipes that introduces young cooks to worldly dishes.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781943016228
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Kitchen Ink Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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