Bon Appétit!: Books to Introduce Your Children to Cooking (continued)

Where Does Food Come From?
By Shelly Rotner and Gary Goss
Millbrook Press, $22.60 (Hardcover)

This simple book shows young readers where some of their favorite foods come from and how they are produced.  Emphasis is placed on the post-harvest transformation of foods into their familiar forms.  Copious and colorful photographs by Shelly Rotner provide a close-up look at some of the many things we like to eat.  Peanuts, grapes, wheat, and cacao beans are linked to their refined forms: peanut butter, grape jelly, bread, and hot cocoa.  The text includes interesting factual asides in a “Did You Know?” format to engage the curiosity of beginning readers.  The author restricts her explorations to vegetarian foodstuffs, no pork chops here!  Rotner’s photographs are eye-catching and her inclusion of shots showing children hard at work eating the very foodstuffs under discussion will likely generate quite an appetite on the reader’s part.

California Gold Rush Cooking
By Lisa Golden Schroeder
Capstone Press, $23.95 (Hardcover)

This book is part of an interesting and well-designed series called Exploring History through Simple Recipes.  Here, the author takes us on a brief tour of the California Gold Rush from its inception in 1848 to the end of the boom in 1850.  Along the way, we discover what life was like onboard ships bound for California as well as in the mining camps and towns that sprang up in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  While this period is not particularly noteworthy for the quality or variety of its cuisine, Lisa Golden manages to incorporate a few simple recipes characteristic of the time.  These include beefsteak (grilled over a campfire, of course), and the famous Hangtown Fry.  She also notes the significance of the Gold Rush as an impetus to cultural mixing on the west coast and includes recipes for chop suey and coloache as evidence of other cultures’ impact on the region.  This book is a nice addition to the series which has proven both innovative and useful as a means of making history more palatable to students.

Write Out of the Oven! Letters and Recipes from Children’s Authors
By Josephine M. Waltz, Illustrated by Christine Mix
Teacher Ideas Press, $23.00  (Hardcover)

Have you ever wondered what your favorite author throws together for a meal in between chapters of that upcoming best-seller?  Josephine Waltz and her sixth-grade reading class decided to find out.  Over a two-year period they sent out query letters, collected replies and tested recipes.  Write Out of the Oven!  is the sparkling result of all their perseverance and hard work, and a tasty bit of work it is, too.

Each recipe is preceded by a student’s letter and the author’s reply.  The dishes are arranged by category from dips to soups and sandwiches to main dishes and desserts.  Parents should note that these recipes are not designed to be assembled by children without adult supervision.  The intent of this collection is to showcase a selection of authors’ favorite recipes, not to provide a working textbook for young chefs.  With this in mind, be prepared to spend some time in the kitchen as an equipment manager, interpreter, assistant measurer, oven monitor and general dogsbody.  You’ll have a blast and so will your culinary director.  Christine Mix’s playful illustrations leaven the text while useful appendices clarify those knotty terminological problems and measurement equivalence issues that even bother the big kids from time to time.  Bon appétit!