Children often have a tendency to end up eating brown and white foods, not wanting to branch out into any more colourful territory for fear of the unknown of purple aubergines or blue blueberries. This book aims to get children thinking a little bit more about the colours of foods, perhaps encouraging them to try something a little bit out of the ordinary one day.
| Mmm...Let's Eat! by Libby Koponen | |
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| Category: For Sharing | |
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Reviewer: Ruth Ng
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| Summary: A book with potential, and easygoing healthy eaters may well love it but it just hit a few too many annoyance buttons with me! | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 18 | Date: June 2013 |
| Publisher: Blue Apple Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1609052928 | |
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This book sounds promising, with it's yummy noises title and the sweet illustrations on the cover. I had high hopes. Sadly these weren't fulfilled. The very first page had me cringing since the word colour is written with the American spelling as 'color'. I know this might seem like a little thing, but it's a bugbear of mine because really, it wouldn't take that much to edit a picture book to British spellings before publishing! Anyway, in spite of the gloriously cute picture on that page of a food rainbow and a range of sweet little animal characters I already felt a little bit grumpy about reading this book!
Next up we have a yellow page, talking about different things that are yellow, both food and non-food items. Surely there's nothing upsetting here, is there? But sadly there is, there is a yellow apple. Yellow? I know, they probably mean a golden delicious, but even these are more green than yellow, aren't they? Well, I think to myself, I shall let that one pass for now because probably the rest of the book will be just fine...
Unfortunately, green sees us looking at a green dump truck and in my head, as I read the words, I am screaming out 'dumper truck! dumper truck!' Poor puppy is faced with a white lunch sack, and a grumble from me about sacks being really very different to bags, although the presence of tofu on the page, and that puppy decides to eat some tofu, do mitigate that somewhat!
Red sees another truck, this time a fire truck and the last colour leaves me puzzled since it is referred to as blue-purple. Are they talking about blue, or about purple? Or did they just want to include both items on one page? In the end, Tiger is seen eating a large bowl of blue-purple berries and your guess is as good as mine as to what exactly those are!
I know, there are probably those of you reading this who think I'm being unnecessarily mean, but with picture books for young children, I really like objects to have the right names, and the correct spellings. I have no problem whatsoever with older children reading American stories with American spellings and references to sidewalks and elevators. But at an early age I just think it's clearer for little ones to hear the terms they are used to. It's such a shame because the illustrations are really lovely - endearing and sweet and funny - and it would only have taken a few very small changes to have made this work for a British audience. I'd have happily let the yellow apple pass if they'd spelled colour correctly!
So, I suppose what I'm saying is that if you're not a fuss pot like me about these things then rush right out to buy this lovely book and read about all these colourful foods with your little one over and over. I certainly applaud the idea behind this book, especially when I think back to the days of my daughter's entire diet consisting of pasta, cheese and chicken! But if this sort of thing will set your teeth on edge too then you might want to avoid it, or perhaps just borrow it from the library instead, so that you don't have to endure any dump trucks every night for the next three years of your life!
For more foodie fiction try Mrs MacCready Was Ever So Greedy by Julie Fulton and Jona Jung
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You can read more book reviews or buy Mmm...Let's Eat! by Libby Koponen at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
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