MAKING MINESTRONE

This very pretty rhymed recipe book falls apart in the cooking department. A gaggle of kids of various races and genders gather to pick the tomatoes, onions, zucchini, and other veggies to make minestrone soup. The illustrations, beautifully rendered in watercolor, ink, and pencil, owe some to dePaola with their round and solid shapes and summer colors. Each page is bordered in a varied vegetable pattern, and friendly sheep and cows gambol near the children. They retire to the kitchen to make the minestrone, and are old enough to manage the knives and spatulas they wield. It all ends in a lovely outdoor tableau of "Homegrown, home cooked, magic minestrone!" Children may be charmed, but the recipe given in the back doesn't match the ingredients in the garden: "pesto" is listed as an ingredient but never explained, and anyone who cooks pasta in soup for over an hour deserves the mush they will get. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)