A delightful collection of recipes that introduces young cooks to worldly dishes.
This kid-friendly cookbook provides a culinary tour of the globe.
Most cookbooks geared toward children share two common goals: to encourage little ones to eat more adventurously (even if that just means devouring more vegetables) and to empower them to participate in the magical process of turning raw ingredients into a delicious home-cooked meal. Most people with kids will tell parents that it’s best to start simple. Breakfast might be scrambled eggs and toast; lunch could feature a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with sliced fruit; and dinner might star spaghetti with marinara sauce. Without forsaking easy-to-tackle recipes, Tierney goes beyond the standard American starter meals with 44 recipes from around the globe, from Europe and Asia to Africa and beyond. Informed by the author’s own travels, the recipes toggle between the familiar and the refreshingly unique. In the first category, there are Chinese egg rolls, Polish pierogis, and German pretzels. In the second category, there are Filipino yema balls (a chewy dessert made with condensed milk and eggs), South African bobotie (a spiced meat concoction), Kenyan irio (a side dish featuring potatoes, corn, and peas), and Antarctican sledging biscuits (a dense, utilitarian pastry prepared simply from flour, water, baking soda, butter, and salt). Tierney calls bobotie “a pumped-up version of a hamburger casserole.” There’s also a fun interactive element: Readers get a “culinary passport,” complete with stamps meant to accompany each country represented in the book. This engaging work is by no means a comprehensive look at the cuisines of the world. The author’s picks are those of a visitor—albeit a curious one—passing through one destination en route to the next. But by cooking some of the best-known breakfasts, entrees, desserts, and snacks of each continent, young chefs will hopefully be excited to try lesser-known regional fare as they grow up.
A delightful collection of recipes that introduces young cooks to worldly dishes.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781943016228
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Kitchen Ink Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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