The most recommended books on potatoes

Daughters of the Famine Road but knew little about the often shocking impact of the potato famine on the people of Ireland. 

Bridget Walsh evokes a compelling sense of the hardship suffered by the poor, with an authentic use of the Irish language. There are enough twists and turns to keep readers wanting to know how it ends.

Robin Jarvis scared the living snot out of me as a kid and when I reread his books as an adult…. Same thing happens.

The Deptford Mice trilogy is a wonderfully scary series, with characters you love and root for and completely forget that they’re smaller than a baby potato. He is a brilliant storyteller and I recommend all his books to you if you’re over nine years old.

(Says the person who gifted them to an eight-year-old and caused nightmares.)

“The face that launched a thousand ships,” as Homer would say. Pollan’s witty and well-written treatment of how plants think and act to modulate their environments inspired 21st-century “critical plant studies” in the Anglophone world, including mine.

The book starts you thinking about the thousands of ways plants elbow into your world and how much they matter to your existence on earth, in economic but also spiritual senses. You end up agape in wonder.

Jeanne Steig wrote a giddy delightful poem for each letter of the alphabet. The poems are replete with weird and wonderful words. The goofy illustrations by William Steig tickle your eyes. One of my favorite poems is "Mishmash". Notice all of the many M words in Mishmash: mallet, misguided, minimize, mix, milk. Could Myron majestically mash potatoes? Mmmm, no.

Mishmash
Making mashed potatoes, Myron?
Must you mix them with the hammer?
This bizarre, misguided method
Causes quite a katzenjammer.

Might you add the milk and butter
In a more majestic manner?
Might a mallet not be better?
That would minimize the clamor.

I adore Potato Pants! It’s laugh-out-loud funny, has hilarious illustrations, entertaining asides, and is the best example I’ve ever seen of effortlessly and humorously modeling how to make amends when you’ve gotten something wrong. Having a potato as the main character is brilliant, and the way he instantly assumes the eggplant has negative intentions is extraordinarily relatable. I wish I’d had this book when I was teaching elementary school. My students and I would have had a good laugh, followed by a good conversation.

​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.

To understand the derivation of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, look no further than American Cookery, the first cookbook written by an American to be published in the United States. The word “Thanksgiving” doesn’t appear in American Cookery, which came out in 1796.  But recipes for the familiar holiday meal are all here: roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, cornbread, and potatoes—and, of course, mince pie and pumpkin pie. American Cookery was the first time that most of these recipes appeared in print. So, too, Simmons was the first culinary writer to focus on New World foods, that is, ingredients that would be easily available to most American cooks. It's no surprise that American Cookery is on the Library of Congress’s list of “Books That Shaped America.”

It’s an interesting cookbook concept because it has been aimed at the Indian market where the summers are extremely hot and one would feel less inclined to spend long hours over a hot stove in the kitchen. However, the recipes include cooling dishes using seasonal fruits and vegetables but with an Indian twist. My favourite is the non alcoholic Party Punch which uses Indian oranges and chikoos which look like potatoes but have a soft brown edible flesh. 

Where the Atlas is a very large book compiled by a team of academics, O'Murchadha's smaller volume covers much the same ground.

He provides some context by opening with a portrait of Ireland before the onset of famine and concluding with a picture of Ireland in the years after. It is made human by the many anecdotes featuring the experiences of particular individulals and families from his native County Clare.

O'Murchadha is highly critical of the government's response to the famine, offering scathing critiques of the Poor Law, the Rate-In-Aid Act, and the beaurocratisation of relief, nevertheless his tone is generally well balanced. I regard both the Atlas and O'Murchada's book as essential reading for anyone with a genuine interest in understanding this watershed period in British-Irish relations.

Morris is really the most disgusting monster ever, and this book will make every child (and parent!) go “Ewwww!” 

It’s hilariously funny, and despite all of Morris’s horrible bad habits, and reading about what he likes to do - you’ll find that you (almost!) fall in love with him! The illustrations are great and it’s enjoyable looking for the gross and manky details with your child, and pointing them out together. Revolting fun!