Books to Read When Teaching Kids About Local Food

I‘ve been in way back mode the last week or so taking a peek at some of the things we have written about in the past. One of them that keeps me coming back is books that are all about connecting kids to food. While we are far from harvest time in this neck of the woods, there’s plenty of good eating to be had – along with plenty of good foodie learning.

Here are a few books from the past that we have loved and kept in our collection as the budding gardener starts to understand and love planting her own food every year:

It was a couple of years ago, when I was looking to picture books for the tiny person to check out about growing food, that I discovered The Life of a Broad Bean by Clare Hibbert.

These are definitely for school-aged kids. But, after letting the tiny person look through it, the big, fun photos gave us lots of room to talk beans.

Part of the Raintree Books Life Cycles series which also includes The Life of a Tree, an Apple, a Sunflower, a Salmon and others, this book is a great addition to your home learning library and a fun way to get into gardening.

Then, it always seems like I am getting ready for Fall. The other day, I was out at Watrin’s Orchard in Comox picking up apple juice and Larry Watrin was chatting a bit with me about the tough apple season this year. It got me thinking about the meager apple supply on our own trees, but also about how much I love them.

The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall, illustrated by Shari Halpern has long been one of our favorite apple-loving books that makes us chuckle a bit every time we learn that a tree could grow everything you need for an apple pie – or at least the key ingredient.

This sweet book about the life of an apple tree and its journey on the way to our stomachs is a great way to get preschoolers and early-grade readers plugged into the fun that the harvest season can bring.

With a great pie recipe and demo on pollination closing the book, it’s also an excellent tool for connecting the dots between nature, food and learning.

There’s also the super cute factor.

Of course, no harvest season is complete without an excellent pumpkin-minded plot. Enter Linda White and her charming picture book/early reader Too Many Pumpkins, illustrated by Megan Lloyd.

We’ve all got that one childhood food, forced on us by the parents, we can’t even consider. For the book’s main character Rebecca Estelle – it’s pumpkins.

But, the universe is a tricky place and she winds up with a whole yard of her most hated vegetable. She goes for the love instead of the hate and turns her pumpkin patch into a place for everyone in town to fall in love with pumpkins.

Kiddos will be dreaming up ways to make pumpkin everything after this one and you get the bonus of one serious warm fuzzy about taking something that looks awful and turning it into something wonderfully unexpected.

Food is all about passing out the love.

Tags: apples, beans, Book Review, books, Comox Valley, food, literacy, local, Our Big Earth Media Co., pumpkins, reading, Review, Vancouver Island

Category: ARTS & LITERACY, Rainy Day Book Club