Katherine Pryor is the award-winning author of several picture books about food and gardens. In addition to writing, she has worked to create better food choices at institutions, corporations, and food banks. She gardens with her young twins at their home on an island in northwest Washington.
A young girl wishes her family’s garden looked as pretty as their neighbors’ gardens—bursting with flowers and fragrance rather than the “ugly vegetables” her mom insists on growing. Her mom assures her their garden is worth waiting for, and that these vegetables will be better than flowers. At harvest time, she makes a soup that brings the neighborhood together. Based on events from author/illustrator Grace Lin’s own childhood, The Ugly Vegetables is a story about how food rooted in culture can pass history and identity down through generations, and the importance of growing food that tastes like home.
In this charming story about celebrating differences a Chinese-American girl wishes for a garden of bright flowers instead of one full of bumpy, ugly, vegetables.
The neighbors' gardens look so much prettier and so much more inviting to the young gardener than the garden of "black-purple-green vines, fuzzy wrinkled leaves, prickly stems, and a few little yellow flowers" that she and her mother grow. Nevertheless, mother assures her that "these are better than flowers." Come harvest time, everyone agrees as those ugly Chinese vegetables become the tastiest, most aromatic soup they have ever known. As the neighborhood comes together to…
When former basketball star Will Allen notices a problem in his community—too many abandoned lots and not enough fresh food—he sees opportunity. This biography tells the story of Will Allen’s inspirational journey to create urban farms that heal both the land and the people harvesting and eating the bounty. Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table is the perfect book to talk to kids about how there is often more than one way to solve a problem and get them excited about growing their own fresh food. Plus, any picture book that includes worms is a picture book I want to read with my kids—and worms play a starring role in Will Allen’s vision.
Will Allen is no ordinary farmer. A former basketball star, he's as tall as his truck, and he can hold a cabbage--or a basketball--in one hand. But what is most special about Farmer Will is that he can see what others can't see. When he looked at an abandoned city lot in Milwaukee he saw a huge table, big enough to feed the whole world.
No space, no problem. Poor soil, there's a solution. Need help, found it. Farmer Will is a genius in solving problems. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation named him one for his innovative urban farming methods,…
My kids absolutely loved this bright, charming book that supports counting and colors as well as portraying vegetables in an irresistible light. A rainbow of vegetables is presented, culminating in a recipe at the back for a vegetable soup. The language is sparse, but we had fun reading this aloud again and again. The recipe for Every Color Soup was the first meal my four-year-old son and I created together where he was an equal participant in the cooking, and he ate every bite!
Purple, yellow, orange, and red. Just the right mix of colored vegetables make a delicious soup in this tasty introduction to colors, counting, and veggies.
All you need is a pot, a spoon, an adult helper, and vegetables of many colors to make a very special soup—Every Color Soup! Learn colors and vegetable names in this bright and colorful picture book with minimal text perfect for the beginning reader. Jorey Hurley’s bright, graphic art and simple text make this vibrant book a perfect read-aloud for budding cooks and their families. This lively picture book also comes with a recipe!
When I first read this board book, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Amalia Hoffman’s vibrant chalk art is amazing, but the plot is a bit odd and the puns were corny. (Sorry, one really can’t help making vegetable puns after reading this book.) But my kids were obsessed! It moved into heavy rotation at our house, and I came to love little Pete the pea who leaves his safe pea pod to travel the galaxy on his carrot spaceship. It’s full of jokes and adventures perfect for the preschool crowd. I mean, who doesn’t want carrot rocketships for a snack?
Imagine what would happen if fresh veggies could go on a cosmic adventure! Well, blast off with Pete the pea and find out what he discovers outside his pod. Pete joins other curiously shaped vegetables such as an eggplant, artichoke, cauliflower, ear of corn, and mushroom as they each take a starring role in this creative tale of space exploration, daring, and friendship.Who knew healthy food could be so much fun? Let your imagination run to space and back as ordinary vegetables take on a whole new meaning!
In a list about vegetables, I couldn’t resist including one book about fruit, simply because I love it so much. Various fruits take turns being celebrated in rhyme, but as one increasingly gloomy orange realizes, it cannot be included, because, well, it’s in the title. This is a book parents love every bit as much as the kids, and reading it aloud 10,000 times just made me love it more. It will make any meal or snack involving fruit more fun. (Our family still quotes a particularly memorable line every time we eat kiwi.) There are some references that go over kids’ heads, but the book is so funny and well-written that mine never cared. Have fun, and plan on stocking the fruit bowl.
A perfect laugh-out-loud, read-aloud from New York Times bestselling author Adam Rex!
We all know nothing rhymes with orange. But how does that make Orange feel? Well, left out! When a parade of fruit gets together to sing a song about how wonderful they are-and the song happens to rhyme-Orange can't help but feel like it's impossible for him to ever fit in. But when one particularly intuitive Apple notices how Orange is feeling, the entire English language begins to become a bit more inclusive.
Beloved author-illustrator Adam Rex has created a hilarious yet poignant parable about feeling left out,…
The first harvest of a summer garden is always exciting, but what happens when the plants just keep growing...and growing...and growing? When Zora finds herself with more zucchini than her family can bake, sauté, or barbecue, she dreams up solutions to keep her precious veggies from going to waste. Fortunately, the resourceful girl comes up with the perfect plan—a garden swap!
“A fun and accessible title that lends itself to discussion of gardening, nutrition, and problem-solving.” — School Library Journal
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
