VEGETABLE CHATTER

A group of vegetables share silly expressions in this pun-heavy concept book for young readers.

Beginning with a disclaimer that all the characters are “100% organic,” Mommy Moo Moo’s picture book, filled with cartoonish versions of vegetables, includes a phrase on each page representing the drawn character. Some are familiar expressions, such as “Okey dokey, artichokey!” Others reference familiar pop-culture figures (the Beatles are depicted as pickled beets, with a reference to Sgt. Pippa as the lead singer) or old jokes (“Cantaloupe tonight” a melon says to a suitor). A head of lettuce leads a congregation of onions and leeks in prayer with the pun “Lettuce pray.” While some of the wordplay will go over the heads of the preschool and lap-reader audience, the alliterative or rhyming phrases are fun to repeat aloud. No genders are mentioned in the text, but many of Edwards’ illustrations are coded with stereotyped gender traits: High-heeled and lipstick-wearing vegetables have eyelashes while a mustachioed tomato and other vegetables do not. Perhaps less amusing is the image of a pumpkin with a tattoo that says Pie whistling at a high-heeled slice of pumpkin pie with a whipped-cream head. Still, the creative depictions of common veggies—a raw beet with pickled backup band, a spud with roots growing from its head in a punk hairstyle, or the especially clever illustration of carrots hiding from a rabbit by posing as a fence—will give readers a solid grin.

A silly, fun way to introduce vegetables.