BUNNY LOVES BEANS

A lip-smacking exploration of foods and colors.

What’s not to love? Adorable kids and cuddly animals eat their favorite, super-healthy foods—and teach readers about colors along the way. What role modeling! What savory, crunchy deliciousness! What yummy learning opportunities! Vivid photos are organized as spreads: Each left-hand page highlights a color and shows an animal eating a food of that hue. On the right-hand side, a child is seen savoring the same food item. A bouncy, rhythmic phrase accompanies the introduction of each color. Enhancing children’s learning, Whittingham includes nifty adjectives, makes clear where these foods come from (for instance, how or where they were picked), and demonstrates what fun it is that children and animals enjoy the same luscious delicacies. The names of colors and animals are set off in boldface letters. On one page, for instance, both a dog and a child savor watermelon: “Cool pink, drippy pink, / Plucked off the vine pink— / Pink for a puppy, / And pink for me!” It would have been helpful if the foods had been labeled in the spreads, though they are noted in the front and back endpapers. A final page provides excellent ideas to encourage healthy eating habits.

A treat for eyes and palates. Kids will want to return to this and eat healthy, too.