455279 Mon Oct 29 13:01:52 -0700 2007 63 33 Food Media and News 0 3077260 Hello, I am doing a project about the culture surrounding food and its representation in children's literature (in the USA and around the world). I am looking for good books to read that would help me with my project. Specifically I am looking for picture books (not necessarily story books) that present food in an interesting/fun/creative way. Thanks for your help and I'll let you know what I find out. Mikkel Mon Oct 29 13:01:52 -0700 2007 67244 bakuninhong 1 3077346 Maurice Sendak -- In The Night Kitchen Also, input this: 'Potluck: a Feast of Picture Books about Food' in the search of the site for new products, and you'll get a list of twenty five picture books. Mon Oct 29 13:21:53 -0700 2007 3077260 11104 dolores 2 3077637 Sendak's "Little Bear" books include a lovely story about making birthday soup. Mon Oct 29 14:28:28 -0700 2007 3077346 11231 Glencora 2 3078449 I second In the Night Kitchen. I also had one I loved called Mexicali Soup. Everyone in a big hispanic family wanted the mother to leave something out of the soup, so it ended up being just hot water. Then, of course, everyone changed their minds and wanted her to make the soup the way she always did. Mon Oct 29 19:12:24 -0700 2007 3077346 107491 dinner belle 3 3078454 Just found the story part of Mexicali Soup. The book's out of print. Too bad -- great, colorful illustrations. Here's the link: http://www.soupsong.com/smexical.html Mon Oct 29 19:15:37 -0700 2007 3078449 107491 dinner belle 1 3077438 Stone Soup Mon Oct 29 13:40:40 -0700 2007 3077260 57199 clamscasino 2 3077456 James and the Giant Peach Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Mon Oct 29 13:44:18 -0700 2007 3077438 109433 stopurmakingmehungry 2 3077598 Stone Soup!!!! I loved that book. What a great story about being creative in the kitchen and improvising. Mon Oct 29 14:19:45 -0700 2007 3077438 122137 avena 3 3080459 Heh -- and here I thought Stone Soup was a warning not to be greedy and miserly, or someone will trick you out of your hoard ;-) Tue Oct 30 12:48:38 -0700 2007 3077598 53971 momjamin 1 3077462 Bread and Jam For Frances Mon Oct 29 13:44:48 -0700 2007 3077260 11231 Glencora 1 3077544 - Blueberries for Sal (absolutely classic) - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (and the sequel, though I can't recall the name off the top of my head) (I love these drawings - can still see each one in my mind) There's a wonderful group of children's board books by Amy Wilson Sanger that I've loved - First Book of Sushi; Hola Jalapeno; Mangia! Mangia!; A Little Bit of Soul Food; Let's Nosh; Yum Yum Dim Sum. The art in these are interesting - love the rhymes - Amazon.com has some "search inside the book" images, if you're curious. Mon Oct 29 14:03:58 -0700 2007 3077260 58039 ElsieDee 2 3077674 Second Blueberries for Sal and Stone Soup. Also all the Alligators All Around stuff by Sendak -- like Chicken Soup with Rice. But most importantly in my childhood, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Love it. Mon Oct 29 14:40:27 -0700 2007 3077544 46777 ctscorp 3 3078350 Chicken Soup With Rice by Sendak is magnificent. Especially for a read-out-loud, and could get kids excited about, um, soup. Mon Oct 29 18:36:37 -0700 2007 3077674 49525 cayjohan 2 3080253 I adored Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs when I was a kid. I still remember the look of joy on the children's faces when a giant doughnut crushed the school house. Tue Oct 30 11:57:33 -0700 2007 3077544 10793 Morton the Mousse 3 3088278 I LOVED Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs too! I just bought a new copy and I read it to my goddaughter. She absolutely loves it, about as much as I did when I was a kid. I adored the idea of the sky raining doughnuts, a split pea fog, and giant pancakes flattening a house, and rafts of stale bread. I was a chubby kid who LOVED food, so I think I was just fascinated with the idea that somewhere in the world, the sky could rain cheeseburgers and spaghetti. Other books I loved as a kid that figured prominently in my development and in my love for and interest in food include: (I know you are looking for picture books, but here are some of my childhood faves in which food figures prominently): - The Little House on the Prairie series (every book, but especially Little House in the Big Woods for the pig butchering chapter, and Farmer Boy for every gluttonous page, pretty much, and the chapter in the Long Winter in which the train finally comes in and they have Christmas in the spring -- these books really taught me so much at a young age about the connections between food, subsistence, and the seasons, and how fortunate we were to even have food on the table) - What's for Lunch, Charley? (1961) - Amelia Bedelia books (I loved the endings when she would bake a pie and smooth over everyone's anxiety over her misdeeds and mistakes) - There was a Casper the Ghost book I loved in which Casper and a rat make a grilled cheese sandwich. It just tickled me when I was 8 years old. oh...and there are tons more...these are just off the top of my head. Fri Nov 02 00:41:03 -0700 2007 3080253 50341 sfkusinera 4 3089617 Oh, I adore all of the Amelia Bedelia books, and those are on the picture book/chapter book borderline, I think. Fri Nov 02 11:39:54 -0700 2007 3088278 13525 JasmineG 2 3100282 I second Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Tue Nov 06 10:57:45 -0800 2007 3077544 88683 stellamystar 2 3499207 Pickles to Pittsburgh is the sequel... :-) Sun Mar 16 18:28:34 -0700 2008 3077544 148402 pringle347 1 3078152 A Case of Stripes Mon Oct 29 17:14:22 -0700 2007 3077260 39874 chowser 1 3078190 I love the book, "Something's Happening on Calabash Street." http://www.betterworld.com/Something's-Happening-on-Calabash-Street-id-0811824500.aspx?afid=11 "Mishca is curious. Something's happening on Calabash Street. The air is filled with the scents of Mrs. Puccini's bread, the Chambal's curry, the Dakarai's yams and the Chofleur's pie. Mischa helps Mama and Baba stuff cabbages round as the moon. When the sky turns rosy, Mama fills her favorite dish, Baba puts on her best dress, and Mischa leads his family down the street to where lanterns are lit and a steel band has begun to play... it's the Calabash Street Fair! Deliciously diverse, Something's Happening on Calabash Street includes child-friendly recipes for each of the dishes featured in the story, making it a picturebook and cookbook all in one." I also second"Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." Mon Oct 29 17:25:13 -0700 2007 3077260 26699 cackalackie 1 3078264 Strega Nona and Pancakes for Breakfast, both by Tomie dePaola Mon Oct 29 17:56:06 -0700 2007 3077260 15919 Leslie 1 3078319 Six years ago, when I became a grandmother for the first time, a Chowhound sent me a book by Rosemary Wells called Yoko. Yoko is a little girl cat who brings sushi to school for lunch, much to the amusement of her classmates. Excellent illustrations. Four grandchildren later, it's still a favorite. Strega Nona is another goodie, about an old Italian witch, with a magic pot that produces spaghetti on command (with the correct magic words). It's by Tomie dePaola. And another by dePaola, What Out for the Chicken Feet in Your Soup Chicken Soup with Rice, Maurice Sendak Mon Oct 29 18:23:26 -0700 2007 3077260 10087 Pat Hammond 1 3078435 My very favorite (and I'm a long time teacher as well as a foodie) is "How My Parents Learned to Eat" by Ina Friedman. It's about U.S. sailor stationed in Japan who falls in love with a Japanese girl, and their efforts to learn each others culinary culture. It's a picture book of interest to 5-8 year-olds. Mon Oct 29 19:04:47 -0700 2007 3077260 120195 jjw 1 3078498 "Chato's Kitchen" and "Too Many Tamales" by Gary Soto Mon Oct 29 19:35:23 -0700 2007 3077260 40023 tachis 1 3078771 Add mine to the votes for Stone Soup, by Jon J Muth. Not a picture book by any means but beautifully illustrated. Mon Oct 29 22:00:10 -0700 2007 3077260 138472 maplesugar 1 3080081 The storyteller Norah Dooley has four wonderful picture books: Everybody Cooks Rice, Everybody Bakes Bread, Everybody Serves Soup, and Everybody Brings Noodles. Each one features a little girl named Carrie visiting different homes in her multiethnic neighborhood, where her neighbors are preparing dishes related by the theme of each title. A big plus - recipes are given at the end of each book! Tue Oct 30 11:19:30 -0700 2007 3077260 18512 Allstonian 1 3080445 Not specifically about food, but there are a lot of big hearty fabulous meals described in drooling detail in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Farmer Boy." Oh, wait, you wanted picture books. Oh, well. I still have to make the recommendation, though! I'm craving pancakes just thinking about it. Tue Oct 30 12:45:20 -0700 2007 3077260 108080 BostonCookieMonster 2 3086092 Farmer Boy is absolutely my favorite children's book that turns out to be mostly about food, not only meals, but also things like digging wintergreen berries out of the snow and baking potatoes on the fire during harvest. Worth looking at, even though it's not a picture book. Thu Nov 01 10:03:48 -0700 2007 3080445 10159 Ruth Lafler 3 3086306 And making ice cream while the parents were away, IIRC, using up most of the sugar and the ice from the ice house. Now that I think about it, since Laura must have been writing the Farmer Boy book from Almanzo's stories of his childhood, it makes lots of sense that there's a food theme! The books about Laura seemed to come back to sewing and schoolwork... Thu Nov 01 11:05:16 -0700 2007 3086092 53971 momjamin 3 3089612 Me too! I read Farmer Boy over and over again when I was little, and one of the reasons I loved it so much was because of all of the food descriptions. Fri Nov 02 11:39:10 -0700 2007 3086092 13525 JasmineG 4 3089650 So, have you ever tried putting a glass of popcorn into a glass of milk? Fri Nov 02 11:44:41 -0700 2007 3089612 10159 Ruth Lafler 5 3096949 I was actually thinking of that recently when we had popcorn with our kids, but haven't had the guts to try it ;-) You? Mon Nov 05 11:52:26 -0800 2007 3089650 53971 momjamin 6 3098322 Never had popcorn w/milk, but it is great w/ soup! An Ecuadorian tradition. Mon Nov 05 18:06:17 -0800 2007 3096949 67244 bakuninhong 5 3098371 We tried it when we were kids and in the Farmer Boy mode. Problem was, we used Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Big sticky mess as we kept stuffing them in. Let's just say this: I don't think Almanzo Wilder had Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Still, I have half a mind to try it again. Any brave souls with recs? Mon Nov 05 18:30:09 -0800 2007 3089650 49525 cayjohan 1 3080467 Laura Numeroff has a series along the lines of "if you give an inch, they'll take a mile": If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, If You Give a Pig a Pancake. Tue Oct 30 12:51:06 -0700 2007 3077260 53971 momjamin 2 3080487 Green Eggs and Ham!! Tue Oct 30 12:55:20 -0700 2007 3080467 78611 aurora50 1 3080557 The Very Hungry Catepillar! Oh man, I love that book. Tue Oct 30 13:14:33 -0700 2007 3077260 13525 JasmineG 1 3081389 Sam's Sandwich by David Pelham is a charming little fold out book, actually shaped like a sandwich. Written in rhyme, it combines the yumminess of the various sandwich ingredients with the eeewwww factor that kids seem to love (Sam is an imp and sticks various icky bugs-n-such into the sandwich he's making with his sister). Very cute, but rather fragile with the foldouts - we went through three copies with my kids. Tue Oct 30 18:34:51 -0700 2007 3077260 49525 cayjohan 1 3081412 In addition to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Pickles to Pittsburgh (the sequel), Gregory the Terrible Eater is a great book about a goat who only wants to eat people food, not trash. He learns that balanced meals, containing both kinds of food (what he should eat vs. what he wants to eat) are the way to go. Maybe I should have read it more carefully. ;-) Tue Oct 30 18:40:36 -0700 2007 3077260 103215 malkazanie 1 3081474 Yum Yum Dim Sum is a picture book. The author did a series of books featuring foods from different cultures. Tue Oct 30 19:10:11 -0700 2007 3077260 16280 cecilia 1 3082166 Cherry the Pig by Utako Yamada is about a pig who enters an apple cake in a local Harvest Festival bake-off and then opens a bakery. It's my new favorite book. Wed Oct 31 06:08:28 -0700 2007 3077260 44952 dukegirl 1 3082389 This thread prompted me to go to the library yesterday and try to find some of these books. I could only find some, but I did come up with a very nice one, Bagels from Benny by Aubrey Davis. It's explicitly religious but the message of good deeds and improving the world by helping others is universal. Wed Oct 31 07:20:49 -0700 2007 3077260 25244 rockycat 1 3085380 Thunder Cake, by Patricia Polacco. Girl is afraid of thunder, so her babushka grandmother has her help make "thunder cake," going around her (Michigan) farm with the goats, gathering all the ingredients—eggs from the hen, milk from the cow, chocolate from the dry shed, tomatoes from the trellis, etc.—and the little girl overcomes her fears of various things in the process because tough old Grandma's there to help her and encourage her. They make the cake while the storm is coming and it's ready by the time it starts raining. Fear of thunder conquered. My 18-month-old loves it, and always points out the crazy samovar on the side table. Thu Nov 01 06:16:01 -0700 2007 3077260 11067 Liana Krissoff 2 4402726 That's a great suggestion - there are a bunch of beautifully illustrated Patricia Polacco titles, many with ethnic themes and food. Mon Feb 09 19:52:15 -0800 2009 3085380 42513 Mawrter 1 3085395 The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog has prompted my son to quote, "Hmm, needs mustard." Thu Nov 01 06:22:20 -0700 2007 3077260 67461 shellyesq 1 3085754 It is a children's cookbook. However, Alice Water's wrote "Fanny at Chez Panisse" Thu Nov 01 08:20:52 -0700 2007 3077260 68974 michparent 1 3088710 Jellybeans for Breakfast ... :) Fri Nov 02 07:31:27 -0700 2007 3077260 10666 Chocolatechipkt 1 3089667 Mikkel, "I am doing a project about the culture surrounding food and its representation in children's literature" What do you mean by project? Fri Nov 02 11:48:54 -0700 2007 3077260 26666 FrankJBN 2 3090726 It's a culture of literature assignment for my Children's Literature class. I have to describe how children's books describe the culture of food as well as how they present the subject of food to kids. Fri Nov 02 17:20:47 -0700 2007 3089667 67244 bakuninhong 1 3098568 Elizabeth Enright's book "Then There Were Five," which is part of the "Melendy" series, published in the 1940s, has an extremely funny couple of chapters about the two teenage girls trying to get all the canning done while the adults are away. Interesting bit of WWII Americana. Not a picture book, though. Mon Nov 05 19:51:24 -0800 2007 3077260 138816 jlafler 2 3098643 P.S. My husband suggests Beatrix Potter. Most of the stories are about critters trying to avoid becoming food. Mon Nov 05 20:29:53 -0800 2007 3098568 138816 jlafler 2 3098969 One of my favorites! I loved all of her books. There's also another author who writes children's books about migrant farmers - strawberry pickers - during the Depression. I think her first name is Lois. Edit - This is it http://www.amazon.com/Strawberry-Girl-Lois-Lenski/dp/039730109X - Strawberry Girl, Lois Lenski. Tue Nov 06 03:04:51 -0800 2007 3098568 10985 MMRuth 1 3101922 Robert McCloskey's One Morning in Maine, too. :) Tue Nov 06 18:53:14 -0800 2007 3077260 10666 Chocolatechipkt 2 3101940 My Daughter just got this for her birthday: MY MOM LOVES ME MORE THAN SUSHI by Filomena Gomes Illustrated by: Ashley Spires Release Date: 9/1/06 Publisher: Orca Books Together a girl and her mother make sushi, biscotti, houska, canja, couscous, megadarra, smorgastarta, crepes, jambalaya, and samosas. Nice pictures, interesting foods! Tue Nov 06 18:59:43 -0800 2007 3101922 23945 amhaffen 1 3499214 Check out Mama Provi and the Pot of Rice...another great kids book, I forget the author. Great story with great cultural references for all ethnic groups. Sun Mar 16 18:30:44 -0700 2008 3077260 148402 pringle347 1 3500048 My daughter recently received "Cook-A-Doodle-Do." It's a retelling of the Little Red Hen story but instead of the traditional, Rooster, Iguana, Pot-bellied Pig, and Turtle team up to make strawberry shortcake. I find the style a little annoying but the idea is cute and there is a significant amount of genuine cooking instruction in it. My 5-year-old is begging to make the recipe in the book and I can't convince her that we won't get fresh strawberries until at least May. Mon Mar 17 06:33:10 -0700 2008 3077260 25244 rockycat 1 3501231 Gub-Gub's Book, by Dr. Doolittle author Hugh Lofting. A charming novelette about a pig who decides to become a chef, written many decades before Ratatouille. Stop That Pickle is an often overlooked classic. Green Eggs and Ham, of course, and Gary Soto's Too Many Tamales. I'm not such a fan of the many, many picture books whose basic moral is: be a vegetarian. Mon Mar 17 11:59:57 -0700 2008 3077260 10702 condiment 1 3501952 Bee-bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park. Mon Mar 17 14:51:14 -0700 2008 3077260 11115 Sloth 1 3502111 "The Latke who wouldn't stop screaming" by Lemony Snicket "Carmine More than Red" by Melissa Sweet (a retelling of Red Riding Hood) "The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Stories" John Scieszka "The Sweetest Fig" Chris Van Allsburg Mon Mar 17 15:36:44 -0700 2008 3077260 59951 thinks too much 1 3502698 I just remembered another one: Thundercake by Patricial Polacco...includes the recipe at the end of the story! Mon Mar 17 18:54:55 -0700 2008 3077260 148402 pringle347 1 4398406 Hi, I am writting my dissertation on a similar topic. Could you tell me what books you used, especially for the theoretical part and what did you find out? And maybe you have any tips for me? Thanks, Asta Sun Feb 08 11:45:45 -0800 2009 3077260 264624 summer_inside 2 4661579 Hmmm...I'm not so sure about the theoretical part. Here's what I wrote for my summary: Author’s Note Nancy Castaldo wrote Pizza for the Queen, a mouth-watering book, about the inception of the Pizza Margherita, pizza with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella (“You have captured the colors of our beloved flag on this pizza. I am sure to find it delicious,” exclaims Queen Margherita in Pizza for the Queen). This is the best pizza possible for the adult palate. Castaldo’s book lovingly recreates the first ever Pizza Margherita. Kids might not appreciate the hot, sliced tomatoes or the green basil that make Pizza Margherita so good. So this book teaches kids how to make the same good pizza, in the form of a classic: cheese pizza. As Francis states so frankly in Bread and Jam for Francis, “Well, there are many different things to eat, and they taste many different ways. But when I have bread and jam I always know what I am getting, and I am always pleased.” The same is true for a good cheese pizza. This book is an activity book that tries to marry the action in a recipe to actual pictures in a book to make pizza-cooking easy for even the youngest readers (with a little help from mom or dad). As a kid, and even now I love activity books. Growing up I read and engaged a lot of activity books because it allowed me a way to harness and enjoy both mental and physical energy into a creative activity. A couple of years ago I realized that I was reading a lot of cookbooks just for fun. I was so immersed in these books that I would speed through them without realizing I was reading so much. The action called for in cookbooks linked me to correlated physical activity in my mind, connecting the words with movement. Good activity books do this very well. An instructional book on how to construct something should make this link very precisely, with exact language that connects with the reader and motivates her to keep reading. I wrote this recipe book because I love to cook pizza. In the words of a teenage English chef, Sam Stern, “I’m usually pretty impatient, but I can spend hours chopping stuff, blending, whisking, and mixing. I find all that activity really relaxing.” I hope this simple cookbook tells the story of the making of a cheese pizza. This was my absolute favorite pizza growing up. My dad, Dr. Pizza, made this and many more complex pizzas every Friday night for our family’s friends. This recipe takes me back to when I was a youngin’. Children’s cookbooks have become more and more impressive and diverse. One English teenager has a cookbook with pork loin, gnocchi, whole roasted chicken and cheesecake! American children are becoming more sophisticated, eschewing fast food for local, organic choices. However, children are children and will always love cheese pizza. Also the cheese pizza is a culinary building block, not extremely difficult yet so familiar. It is a blank slate, begging to be jazzed up, played upon, and improvised. Therefore I’ve dedicated this book to that classic. Wed May 06 23:41:42 -0700 2009 4398406 67244 bakuninhong 3 4664850 COOL! Thanks for the update & best wishes with your book project! When can we expect to see it in stores? Website? I *love* that you quoted Frances... and I even recognized the pizza queen story. :-) Congratulations! Thu May 07 21:16:41 -0700 2009 4661579 42513 Mawrter 1 4402764 Check out http://www.georgeancona.com/ - many titles about food. "Pablo recuerda la fiesta del Día de los Muertos" by George Ancona "Tar Beach" by artist Faith Ringgold - awesome picnic with beautifully described/illustrated African American foods "On Market Street" by Anita & Arnold Lobel "Don't Worry Wags" by Christophe Loupy & Eve Tharlet (illus.) Mon Feb 09 20:07:57 -0800 2009 3077260 42513 Mawrter