Food is a very simple book in the Jan Pienkowski series of Nursery books. It has his distinctive, brightly coloured illustrations and one word - the name of the food- on each double page. while it doesn't excite me, what I do like about this book is that it shows toddlers where their food comes from. Many young children now think that milk comes from the supermarket, yet here we have a glass of milk on one side of the page and cows on the other. Similarly for fish fingers, sausages,eggs, chips, rice etc. The pink ice-cream and the strawberries may be slightly less straightforward and the rice the only food to represent a bit of cultural diversity, but, overall this is a useful book for learning about the origins of some of our food. The end of the book has a greengrocer scene with the caption 'What food?', followed by a piece of birthday cake and a plate of chicken, chips and peas. These last pages should encourage more discussion on a subject that most children are very fond of!

2009-06-28