A colorful celebration of food and culture—children will delight in cooking (and eating) their way around the nation.
Lavin provides recipes and fun facts from across the United States in this children’s cookbook.
The author collects child-friendly recipes from the American Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West as well as from the federal district, commonwealths, and territories. Each section is prefaced by a map and a brief cultural and geographical description of the states therein. These introductions serve to identify unique regional characteristics throughout the U.S., which in turn are reflected in the recipes. The reader learns that the Southeast, with its subtropical climate, has a long growing season and thus is “rich in natural resources such as rice, cotton, citrus, sugar cane, tobacco, and peanuts.” The recipes that follow include Arkansas’ “Arkansas Rice Casserole,” Florida’s “Key Lime Pie,” sugar-heavy dishes such as Kentucky’s “Kentucky Derby Pie” and Louisiana’s “Yeti Baked Alaska,” and peanut dishes like Georgia’s “No-Bake Peanut Butter Pie” and Virginia’s “Boiled Peanuts.” Some recipes pay homage to historical food facts: Connecticut’s “Cheeseburgers in Puff Pastry” acknowledges the claim by Louis Lassen (of the city of New Haven) that he created the first hamburger. Lavin writes for children but with the caveat that adult supervision and a degree of adult involvement will be required in the cooking process. The dishes are all, to some degree, historically significant, easy to cook, or highly appealing to a child’s palate (often all three) and tend toward the lighter side. The book’s most obvious strength is its contextualization of food within ideas of national and local identity. Keeping the project fun, many of the recipes include silly jokes in the margins (“Why don’t lobsters share? They are shellfish”). Instead of photographs, the dishes are depicted in vibrant drawings by Eroshina that make them seem both delectable and achievable to the budding chef.
A colorful celebration of food and culture—children will delight in cooking (and eating) their way around the nation.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781943016143
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Kitchen Ink Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Absolutely wonderful in every way.
A long-forgotten chapter in New York City history is brilliantly illuminated.
In mid-19th-century New York, horses and horse-drawn vehicles were the only means of transportation, and the din created by wheels as they rumbled on the cobblestones was deafening. The congestion at intersections threatened the lives of drivers and pedestrians alike. Many solutions were bandied about, but nothing was ever done. Enter Alfred Ely Beach, an admirer of “newfangled notions.” Working in secret, he created an underground train powered by an enormous fan in a pneumatic tube. He built a tunnel lined with brick and concrete and a sumptuously decorated waiting room for passenger comfort. It brought a curious public rushing to use it and became a great though short-lived success, ending when the corrupt politician Boss Tweed used his influence to kill the whole project. Here is science, history, suspense, secrecy, and skulduggery in action. Corey’s narrative is brisk, chatty, and highly descriptive, vividly presenting all the salient facts and making the events accessible and fascinating to modern readers. The incredibly inventive multimedia illustrations match the text perfectly and add detail, dimension, and pizazz. Located on the inside of the book jacket is a step-by-step guide to the creative process behind these remarkable illustrations.
Absolutely wonderful in every way. (author’s note, bibliography, Web resources) (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-375-87071-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Best for readers who have clearly indicated they would like to take their writing efforts to the next level.
A young white girl writes and illustrates a story, which is critiqued by the narrator as it is created.
The girl begins her story by drawing a Hero. Then she thinks maybe a Heroine would be better. Then she decides both will work. She places them in “a good town, filled with good people, called our Setting.” The narrator, an unseen editor who lurks over the artist’s shoulder, tells the storyteller she needs to put in some Conflict, make the Evil Overlord scarier, and give it better action. This tongue-in-cheek way of delivering the rules of creative writing is clever, and paired with Le Huche’s earnest, childlike illustrations, it seems to be aimed at giving helpful direction to aspiring young creators (although the illustrations are not critiqued). But the question needs to be asked: do very young writers really need to know the rules of writing as determined by adults? While the story appears to be about helping young readers learn writing—there is “A Friendly List of Words Used in this Book” at the end with such words as “protagonist” and “antagonist” (glossed as “Hero and Heroine” and “Evil Overlord,” respectively)—it also has a decidedly unhelpful whiff of judgment. Rules, the text seems to say, must be followed for the story to be a Good one. Ouch.
Best for readers who have clearly indicated they would like to take their writing efforts to the next level. (Picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-2935-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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