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
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda.
Hank Zipzer, poster boy for dyslexic middle graders everywhere, stars in a new prequel series highlighting second-grade trials and triumphs.
Hank’s hopes of playing Aqua Fly, a comic-book character, in the upcoming class play founder when, despite plenty of coaching and preparation, he freezes up during tryouts. He is not particularly comforted when his sympathetic teacher adds a nonspeaking role as a bookmark to the play just for him. Following the pattern laid down in his previous appearances as an older child, he gets plenty of help and support from understanding friends (including Ashley Wong, a new apartment-house neighbor). He even manages to turn lemons into lemonade with a quick bit of improv when Nick “the Tick” McKelty, the sneering classmate who took his preferred role, blanks on his lines during the performance. As the aforementioned bully not only chokes in the clutch and gets a demeaning nickname, but is fat, boastful and eats like a pig, the authors’ sensitivity is rather one-sided. Still, Hank has a winning way of bouncing back from adversity, and like the frequent black-and-white line-and-wash drawings, the typeface is designed with easy legibility in mind.
An uncomplicated opener, with some funny bits and a clear but not heavy agenda. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-448-48239-2
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
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