The World in Your Lunch Box

The World in Your Lunch Box
Claire Eamer, author
Sa Broothroyd, illustrator
Annick Press
2012

Ever wondered where tomatoes originated? I'll give you a hint: it's not Italy. What about ice cream? Watermelon? Vanilla? Pita bread?

The World in Your Lunch Box is a delightful exploration of some of the foods your student might have in his or her school lunch in a given week. A teacher assigns his students the following: keep a diary of your lunch for a week and look up information about each of the parts of your lunch. Brief history, scientific information, and weird facts are presented about foods as diverse as those mentioned above, plus parts of a pizza, chocolate, corn, .... Funny little drawings punctuate the text including little jokes (i.e. Pita bread says to regular bread, "Bread, you'll never understand, you were just raised differently." Bread responds, "Pita, you're full of hot air." yuk yuk yuk)

Middle school students will enjoy this little nonfiction gem--and may come home requesting some new foods! I appreciated the way certain periods of history (i.e. colonization, spice trade, etc.) and the balance between organic and conventionally grown produce was handled. Information was given, but no judgment passed. The point of this book is not to convert anyone to a particular perspective, but to open a kid's eyes to the interesting background of a seemingly ordinary school lunch. There is a nice bibliography and thorough index in the back as well; books recommended for kids definitely come from the more politically correct persuasions, but they seem fairly well rounded.

I think a nice touch would be the addition of some kid-friendly recipes (for instance, there's a suggestion to make your own pizza...but no recipe! The making of mayonnaise is discussed--another potential recipe to try would be great there).

Recommended for upper elementary and up (reading level is not difficult, but kids will get more out of this book if they have a working knowledge of history; references are made to things such as "when the Spanish conquered the ..." without any further elaboration). Book is in stores now and hopefully will be in libraries in the near future!

Advance review copy from netgalley; cover image from goodreads

The Lion's Share

The Lion's Share
Matthew McElligott
Walker Childrens
2009

The Lion's Share is a marvelous, boldly drawn picture book that portrays both a charming story about sharing and greediness as well as illustrating essential math concepts. A lion invites the jungle animals to a dinner party every year, and this is the ant's first time to attend. He is horrified by the other guests' behavior and greediness....When the cake is passed around, the elephant goes first and cuts the cake in half. Each animal, in turn, cuts the remaining cake in half; all that is left for the ant to cut in half simply turns to crumbs when he tries to cut it.  In an effort to make amends for there not being enough cake left for him to share with the lion (after the other animals have had "their share"), he offers to make the lion a cake. Not to be outdone, the animal next in line promptly offers to make twice the number of cakes as the previous animal. By the time the elephant is volunteering, he commits to a large number of cakes! Illustrations nicely capture the shrinking and growing numbers.

Recommended for older preschool and up!