Showing posts with label food science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food science. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 7: Food Science Summer Reading Program

And now for the Finale!  This is the last Summer Reading Program for my location, and I'm a little sad, and a little ready to have a break.

We did some great books and crafts and activities tho, and had a big time.

Even Aliens need Snacks got read again, as our Summer Reading featured title, and then I had a trio of other short books to round out the program with a bang.

Where Does Food Come From?
Shelley Rotner and Gary Goss, illustrated (photographs) by Shelley Rotner
ISBN: 07613269358

I really liked this nonfiction title, with very little text, and excellent pictures.  It made for a great interactive read as the kids told me all about their experiences and preferences with each food that we learned about.  I don't know what it is about nonfiction photographic picture books, but they really do make it nearly irresistible for a kid not to tell about what they know.  I love it.  I think I'm going to hunt a copy down for my home library, just to have something there to spark an interest in the real world.  We start with major foods (rice, milk, corn, apples, potatoes..) which each get a full spread - going from the plant to the food item, to the finished product (rice, milk, popcorn, apple juice, french fries) getting eaten by one of many engaging multicultural kidlets.  Peanuts and grapes share a spread for PB&Js, and then we're on to single pages devoted to honey, maple syrup, salt, and sugar.  The only thing I would improve is to have a "landing page" at the end more substantial than the montage of faces asking what foods the reader/listener enjoys.


The Little Green Witch
Barbara Barbieri McGrath, illustrated by Martha Alexander
ISBN: 9781580891530

This is a totally un-spooky "Halloween" version of the Little Red Hen, but I don't find that it's very Halloweeny - the peculiar family is no more weird than any other monster or ghoul group in picture books.  Fairly straightforward re-telling, where a Little Green Witch does all the work while a ghost, a bat, and a gremlin laze about and refuse to help.  At the end, to tie the homage up with a bow, the Little Green Witch does a POP of magic and turns the useless trio into little red hens (which was greatly appreciated by my audience).  Scritchy pastel drawings on white backgrounds reinforce the benign nature of the story and the characters.


The Lion's Share: A Tale of Halving Cake and Eating It, Too
Matthew McElligot
ISBN: 9780802797698

Sharp-eyed readers will note that this makes two books by McElligot that I read in one storytime.  Normally, I try to avoid that, but in cases where the author or illustrator has very few books (Dan Yaccarino) or they have different books with very different styles (David Shannon), or have written books with very different collaborators, then sometimes I'll slip a double-header into the mix.  In this case, McElligot's style for The Lion's Share is so different from Aliens Need Snacks that I don't even think the kids would have realized it if I didn't point it out to them.

I really like this book.  An ant gets invited to a royal dinner, her tablemates have atrocious manners, and the cake for dessert is halved by each recipient so that the poor ant only gets a crumb which she can't even split with the King.  She is humiliated (although it's not her fault) and offers to bring him a cake in recompense.  Each of her tablemates is outraged and refuses to be stood up, and doubles her offer, which gets ridiculous quite quickly.  I loved watching the kid's eyes widen as the amounts grew and grew.  I didn't do it this time, but in the past, I've done the trick of folding paper to illustrate the halving concept, first with a small piece of origami paper, then a huge sheet of butcher paper, and finally with a very large square of thin wrapping paper.  The kids were quite impressed that no matter the original size, it's nearly impossible to fold after so few folds.

And that's us for the summer!  I hope some of the recommendations and reads are helpful for you and your audiences!









Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 7: Food Science Storytime

And now that you've waded through all the massive piles of rejects for this week's program, here's the first set of actual program books!

Even Aliens Need Snacks
Matthew McElligott
ISBN: 9780802723987

Our narrator is an intrepid cook, creating fabulous concoctions like "an eggplant, mustard, and lemonade smoothie" that he thinks is great, and his older sister thinks is revolting.  Undeterred, he sets up a snack shack to sell his creations to friends and neighbors, but no luck.  After a day of no customers, he retreats to bed, but he hears a strange whirring sound - an alien has landed and is standing at his snack stand!  He quickly heads to the kitchen, whips up a snack, and before you know it, he's up every night serving all sorts of interesting foods to all sorts of interesting aliens!  Right before school starts back up, he goes all-out and creates a souffle out of everything he loves.  Sadly, it's not a hit, but he is still confident in himself.  He likes it after all, and the tag-page on the end shows his sister happily munching away on his latest creation.


Growing Vegetable Soup
Lois Ehlert
ISBN: 0152325751

I have yet to see a picture book do a better job of introducing the concept of gardening for food to little kids than this book here.  If I had to create a storytime collection, this would be one of my cornerstones.  It's bright, it's colorful, it's simple, it's an actual narrative storyline, and it doesn't muddy the concept up with imaginative flourishes (don't get me wrong, I like a good imaginative flourish as much as the next person, but there's a time and place).  Bright die-cut collage pages show disembodied hands in gloves planting, watering, weeding, and picking a variety of simplified garden plants, washing and cutting them up, and rendering them into lovely soup.  Simply perfect.


Rabbit Pie
Penny Ives
ISBN: 067005951X

If it wasn't so hot, and my kids weren't so wiggly, I would have preferred to do Cook-A-Doodle-Doo! instead, but this one also features a recipe, and a horde of wriggly baby bunnies getting settled in for the night and then fed lovely carrots in the morning, so it was a totally acceptable substitute.  The recipe is introduced first, and then the spreads illustrate the different steps of the recipe, like collecting your baby rabbits, and slowly adding 6 cups of milk.  Very sweet, lovely illustrations.  

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 7: Food Science Rejects; Round Four

Final round of rejected Food Science books - I was very close to choosing all of these, and on a different day, or in a slightly different mood, I may have actually used any of them instead.


The Gulps
Rosemary Wells, illustrated by Marc Brown
ISBN: 9780316014601

I really wanted to hate this book when I saw it first, but I just couldn't.  The story is hokey and more than a little heavy-handed, but the family is so good-natured that despite it all, they're easy to root for.  The Gulps are a family of obese rabbits (minus one health-conscious daughter) heading off on their vacation in their oversized mobile home, ready to stop at every fast-food place they can find.  Instead, their RV breaks down in a field, and they are forced to live and work with a farming family (thin and hardworking, of course) for the summer, eating organic foods and pitching in on the farm.  They aren't much use at first, being both fat and unused to physical labor, but over time they toughen up, slim down, and begin to enjoy their newfound energy.  The summer finally over, they fix up the RV and head back onto the road home, stopping at an all-you-can-eat salad buffet to cement their new lifestyle.  It's cute, that's all I can say.  Somehow the heavy-handed message seems more funny and tongue-in-cheek than punitive, and no characters engage bashing either lifestyle or food-choice.  A serious contender, but I felt like I wanted to keep the focus on food itself, not people's relationship with food.  


Eat Like a Bear
April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Steve Jenkins
ISBN: 9780805090390

I really wanted to make this work, but it was up against stiff competition and just barely didn't make it (apologies for the pun).  So, now I just have to do an animal habitat or animal diet storytime so I can use it then!  We follow a lovely collage-of-textural-materials bear through the year, month by month, through a lovely tripping rhyme sequence that covers the major food that the bear will eat that month; new spring shoots and long-dead animals in early spring through ants and clovers and trout in the summer to roots and groundhogs and moths and honey in fall.  I especially like that the story doesn't shy away from the omnivorous nature of a bear, and spends as much time on the insects as it does on plants and animal food sources.  A spread at the end passes on more factual info, broken into different sub-topics.  Really really lovely and enjoyable.  Can't wait to read it for the kids!


Cook-A-Doodle-Doo!
Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel, illustrated by Janet Stevens
ISBN: 0152056580

I have loved this book since I first encountered it for storytime a few years ago.  I try to read it at least once a year.  The grandson of the Little Red Hen (you know, the one who couldn't get any help baking?) finds grandma's old recipe book in his coop, and decides to try it out.  The traditional lazybones remain unwilling to assist, but he's got new friends now, and a turtle, iguana, and pot-bellied pig stand ready and (somewhat) able to help out!  His friends are invested and eager helpers, but not so great at cooking.  They misunderstand the directions, fetch the wrong things, and want to continually taste the in-process recipe.  Despite setbacks, and one calamity, the foursome rally and create a beautiful strawberry shortcake.  The illustrations are delicious, the animals are hysterical, and the casual nod to the classic childhood story just make me all sorts of happy inside.  Sidebars on most of the pages pass on short factoids about ingredients or utensils or processes.  As a bonus, after you've drooled over the lovely shortcake, you can use the enclosed recipe to make your own!  Love this book forever!


Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 7: Food Science Rejects; Round Three

This round was eliminated because the titles were either too tightly focused on one food (apples) or had a split focus (birthdays and storms/fears) making them a little less suited for a Food Science program.

Benny Bakes a Cake
Eve Rice
ISBN: 0688843123

This is an OLD book - as old as I am!  I do really like it for my younger group.  It's Benny's birthday today, and he's helping Mama bake the cake, and Ralph watches.  Benny is also making sure that Ralph is being good.  Once the cake is finished, Benny and Mama get ready to go for a walk, but no one is watching Ralph, and down goes the cake.  Benny is inconsolable, but Mama and Papa save the day, and Benny gets a cake for his birthday after all.  Short, sweet, cute old-fashioned illustrations, and a happy-ever-after ending.  I've used it for birthday, sweets, pets, and cooking storytimes so far.


The Apple Orchard Riddle
Margaret McNamara, illustrated by G. Brian Karas
ISBN: 9780375847448

In contrast with the previous title, this one is quite new, and I would have used it, but it has such a singular focus on apples that I thought it would be better to stay with titles that had a more broad focus.  However, I'm going to be using it regularly for my fall apple storytime.  It's a teensy bit on the long side, but lots of my other apple picks are very short, so it should balance out nicely.  A diverse field trip heads to the apple orchard, where they learn all about different varieties of apples, about apple orchards and growing, and about cider and applesauce.  Through the whole story, the daydreamer main character tries to puzzle out a riddle "a little red house with no windows and no door, but with a star inside" which is eventually answered by a cut apple.


Thunder Cake
Patricia Polacco
ISBN: 0399222316

Another long book, and this time I decided against it because the focus is more on the storms and the girl's fear than on the actual baking.  It remains one of my favorite books about conquering fear of something - by staying busy, staying distracted, and doing what needs doing even if you feel scared inside.  An excellent lesson, all wrapped up in a thundery afternoon of baking.

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 7: Food Science Rejects; Round Two

More fun "food" books for storytimes that didn't quite make the cut for my Food Science programming this year!

This is the "interesting but ultimately unrelated" round of eliminations.

First off:

Secret Pizza Party
Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri
ISBN: 9780803739475

This is a thematic sequel of sorts to Dragons Love Tacos, but it's a perfectly fine stand-alone book.  This raccoon, occasionally decked out in classic spy gear (trench coat, vaguely fedora-ish hat) just wants pizza, and he tries his hardest to steal everyone's slices, but the people in town are too smart for him, and now he's pining away for lack of gooey delicious pizza.  The cure for a mopey raccoon?  Throw a Secret Pizza Party for him, and let him crash his own party and steal his own pizza!  Well, until he gets a bit carried away again.  Cute story, really cute illustrations, just not quite what I want for this program.


How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow?
Wendell Minor
ISBN: 9780399246845

This is just an odd little book.  The author starts with pumpkin-weighing contests at country fairs, and moves pretty quickly into straight imagination, with some weird, garish, overdramatic, and occasionally fairly creepy illustrations.  He envisions pumpkins as large as hot-air balloons, acting as lighthouses for ships, standing in the lineup at Mount Rushmore, and lurking menacingly at the end of the Grand Canyon.  I like the idea, but I really do worry about giving my little ones pumpkin-related nightmares!  I've considered it before for fall, halloween, and pumpkin themes, but I've always wimped out at the last minute.


The Honeybee Man
Lela Nargi, illustrated by Kyrsten Brooker
ISBN: 9780375849800

I was sad that I couldn't quite make this fit.  I'm planning a bee-themed storytime eventually, specifically so I can use this book.  This sweet old dude keeps bees on the top of his apartment building in the city, and he carefully tends them, knows their habits, and keeps them safe as much as he can - and then harvests their honey and gives it away to his neighbors to remind people of how useful (and necessary) bees actually are.  The actual factual info is well-incorporated into the story, and there is a lovely nonfiction spread at the end with a great overview.  The endpapers also have cutaway or cross-sectional black-and-white scientific drawings of bees and bee-related objects.  Very excellent book.

 

Summer Reading Program 2014. Week 7: Food Science Rejects; Round One

Our very last Summer Reading Program is today.  This has been a great year, with some great reads, and great kids and families.

Food Science is interesting - there are a lot of places possible to go with it.  Here are some "runners-up" that didn't make the final cut for one reason or another:

I just recently talked about Food For Thought and I still wish I could use it, but it's just too long for my needs.

Next on the chopping block is:

Talia and the Rude Vegetables
Linda Elovitz Marshall, illustrated by Francesca Assirelli
ISBN: 9780761352174

This is a cute read - I've used it in storytime before.  Talia is getting ready for the Jewish New Year with her grandmother, and she's out in the garden to find what she THOUGHT her grandmother sent her out for: "rude" vegetables.  Along the way, she digs up quite a lot of root veggies, finding a particularly "rude" example each time for her grandmother, and eventually donating the others to the community.  Lots of nice touches, and a beautiful message of working hard and sharing, with no specific religious moralizing.


I really wanted to use this next book again, but it just didn't end up fitting in:
Worms for Lunch
Leonid Gore
ISBN: 9780545243384

What do various animals like to eat for lunch?  Worms?  Not the mouse, nor the cat, or the monkey (bananas for me!) but fish?  LOVE worms!  An excellent and very quick-moving read illustrating that tastes differ between people (and species), with lots of die-cut pages to lift flaps and reveal hidden characters.  I've used this one before as well, and the kids really get a kick out of seeing the various "icky" foods mixed in with standard kid fare like spaghetti and ice cream.



Apple Pie A B C
Alison Murray
ISBN: 9781423136941

People with classically or musically inclined parents will remember the standard Apple Pie A B C rhyme, most likely in the nearly immortal A Apple Pie by Kate Greenaway.  Here we have a pop-art mid-century standard to set beside it, featuring a persistent beagle that is quite reminiscent of Snoopy.  The poor pooch is thwarted at every letter of the alphabet from getting to that apple pie, but he perseveres (the letter P) and eventually manages to slide it off the table and eat it all up, falling into a satisfied slumber on an easy-chair afterwards.  Delightful, and fun to read and look at the bright happy illustrations, but not quite a match for my program needs this time around.