78 books like Astro Pea

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.

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.

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! 

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.

Have you ever wished you could grow those nutritious, meaty peas and beans your granddaddy used to grow? Some had cool names, like Rattlesnake Beans, Big Red Ripper, or Blue Podded Shelling. They were probably heirloom varieties, plants that have been around for 50 years or more. While heirlooms are harder to find than they used to be, and nurseries and garden centers don’t often sell them as young plants, you can still grow these varieties from seeds (tip: look for them online or search for “seed swaps” in your area). Weaver is an organic gardener and food historian who discusses the old-timey veggies our forebears ate and where their seeds came from. You’ll want to plant your own kitchen garden with many of the varieties he covers.

I worked with Sue in the 1980s and came to appreciate her dedication to organic gardening and understanding plants. We then lost touch and it was a great pleasure to come across this book 15 years ago. Although it's over 30 years old, nature does not change and she gives beautiful clear descriptions of how to go about saving seeds from all different types of vegetables. It's neither straightforward nor is it difficult, and you are in good hands with Sue who will help you to succeed in this vital task, more valuable now than ever before. We all need the seeds of health!

This is a guide to saving and growing 160 different vegetables, and you must know how to harvest, save, and store their seeds if you want to plant some of the harder-to-find varieties. Co-author Kent Whealy was one of the founders of Iowa-based Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization and seed bank that has a collection of over 20,000 varieties of heirloom flower, vegetable, fruit, berry, grain, and herb seeds. He and his former wife, Diane Ott Whealy, are credited with sparking the heirloom seed movement in the 1970s. 

We’re starting and ending with something silly but special. This book is about a food… who is picky about food!

In the Pea household, candy is yucky, and VEGETABLES are the delicious treat, which always makes my littles giggle. If you have picky eaters in your household, this book is a fun way to talk about how different people (or pea-ple!) have different tastes, but it’s important to eat a variety of foods. And it’s great to laugh while doing so!

​When I was very small, planting peas in the garden with my grandfather, I felt like a sorcerer's apprentice being initiated into a realm of magic. Carron Brown's Secrets of the Vegetable Garden brings me back to that age of wonder by setting up mysteries to solve. Holding pages up to the sunlight reveals the answers to mysteries and riddles, and shows us what is secretly happening: potatoes growing under the earth, or seeds forming inside a fruit.

There’s one thing most gardeners agree on: you simply can’t beat the taste of a homegrown tomato. Supermarket tomatoes have been bred to withstand shipping and stacking, so they look like perfect, red globes, but unfortunately, many have lost their old-fashioned flavor along the way. Author Craig LeHoullier is a tomato connoisseur who tells you how to grow over 200 varieties, from planting to harvesting and saving their seeds for another season. The photos in this beautifully illustrated book will make your mouth water—just like the tomatoes he recommends.