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 Review by
Louella Moreland
The dust jacket of Carl Warner's new children's book, "A World of Food,"
invites the reader to "discover magical lands made of things you can eat!"
The photographic two-page spreads are not only a delight to the eye but will
also probably send the reader to raid the kitchen cupboards, refrigerator
and freezer. What an appropriate book for the library's summer reading
program theme: "Reading Is So Delicious!"
Each turn of the page offers a different-colored visual treat in detailed
photographs of food. Yellow is a desert landscape of pasta, cheese, grains
and yellow peppers. Gray is a land of mushroom towers with a mushroom soup
sea. Brown is a chocolate-sculpted train racing past chocolate-covered
raisin rocks and through tunnels made of cocoa powder. Pink is a land of
candy with meringue clouds, while purple is a mystical forest of garlic
cloves. The green broccoli forest takes us far from the red land of the
Southwest stones and red pepper scorpion. Gold, orange, white and silver
have their own representative lands. In the last photo we are delighted to
see a multicolored world filled with a variety of tasty treats, with a
fruit-filled gondola hanging from a hot air balloon made of a bunch of
bananas.
An index at the back of the book explains all the foods that were used to
create the items pictured.
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On the first read-through, it would be fun to have children start
predicting the color that will be used on the next pages, or what
food items could be used to represent that color. For children
younger than 4 years, it could be used as a color recognition tool,
although gold and silver are not often used with preschool, and
black is not represented at all. On subsequent read-throughs,
children will delight in poring over each picture, looking at all
the little details that make up the whole. (I imagine quite a few
grown-ups will also find this a fascinating pastime!)
You may have noticed that little has been said of the text. The
reason is that the stilted and difficult rhymes accompanying these
delightful, artistic pictures are frankly quite awful, hard to read
aloud and filled with words that the intended age group will not
understand. But they are not enough to keep me from recommending the
book as a unique picture book. Just skip the text and enjoy a
wonderful adventure through lands that look good enough to eat!
For this book and other picture books on food, visit the Lincoln
Public Library, 725 Pekin St. Be sure to come hungry!
[Text from file received from Louella Moreland,
Lincoln Public Library District]
Ms. Lou's blog:
lincolnpubliclibraryupdates.blogspot.com
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