Recommended Books/DVDs

For Children/Classroom Use

(click the link to purchase on Amazon using the Wellness Forum Foundation Buyers Program)

Preschool to Age 8

• Victory Garden Vegetable Alphabet Book (Jerry Pallotta's Alphabet Books)
  by Jerry Pallotta and Bob Thompson
  This book depicts a vegetable for each letter of the alphabet. The art and text help students to make important associations between vegetables and other familiar things in the environment.
  
  
• Blue's Snack Party: A Lift-the-flap Story (Blue's Clues)
  by Sarah Landy
  Blue's friends bring healthy snacks to a party. Discover each snack by lifting flaps that reveal ingredients, recipes and finished dishes.
  
  
• Growing Vegetable Soup (Voyager Books)
  by Lois Elhert
  Depicts the process of growing and using vegetables and includes a recipe for vegetable soup.
  
  
• Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z
  by Lois Elhert
  A colorful ABC book with a great presentation of a variety of foods both common and uncommon that may entice kids to taste. Includes a glossary with descriptions and interesting facts.
  
  
• Oliver's Vegetables
  by Vivian French
  Oliver visits his grandparents and hopes to find the potatoes so he can have the only vegetable he likes - French fries. But first he must find the potatoes in the garden, and in the process he tries and likes all of the vegetables!
  
  
• The Pea Patch Jig
  by Thatcher Hurd
  A family of mice is quite comfortable in Framer Clem's garden, though they do have some close calls. The story ends with a party in the pea patch, accompanied by a lively jig fiddle tune, the music for which is included at the end of the book.
  
  
• Gregory, the Terrible Eater (Reading Rainbow)
  by Mitchell Sharmat
  Gregory the goat like eggs, vegetables, fruit and fish. But his parents want him to eat garbage!
  
  
• Dinosaurs Alive and Well!: A Guide to Good Health (Dino Life Guides for Families)
  by Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown
  Colorful and bright dinosaurs provide kids with a blueprint to good health. Nutrition, exercise and fitness are some of the topics that are encountered.

Ages 7-11

• This Is the Way We Eat Our Lunch: A Book About Children Around the World
  by Edith Baer
  A rhyming journey through the scenery and foods of places throughout America and the World, from Massachusetts clams to Japanese tempura. At the end, the places visited are listed and marked on a map. Recipes are included for three of the featured foods, and 20 of the other featured foods are each given a brief description.
  
  
• Blue Potatoes, Orange Tomatoes
  by Rosalind Creasey
  This book highlights unique, colorful veggies and features the key steps to growing these varieties, from ordering seeds to planting, tending and harvesting the crops.
  
  
• Cooking Up U.S. History: Recipes and Research to Share with Children
  By Suzanne I. Barchers and Patricia C. Marden
  This book supplies a word list, recipes and a bibliography for five historical periods of U.S. history and six regions of the U.S.
  
  
• Dumpling Soup
  by Jama Kim Rattigan
  A young Hawaiian girl tries to make dumplings for her family's New Year celebration. This story celebrates the joyful ix of food, customs and languages of many cultures.
  
  
• Everybody Cooks Rice (Picture Books)
  by Norah Dooley
  Anthony is late for dinner, so his sister goes from house to house looking for him. In each home, she finds families preparing rice in a different way. This multicultural dinner take ends with several recipes for rice - from Barbados, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, India, China, Haiti and Italy.
  
  
• Family Pictures, 15th Anniversary Edition / Cuadros de Familia, Edición Quinceañera
  by Carmen Lomas Garza
  The author describes in bilingual text and illustrations, her experiences growing up in a Hispanic community in Texas. Several of the stories focus on food-picking, cactus, making tamales, eating tacos, picking oranges and eating watermelon.
  
  
• Food: Feasts, Cooks and Kitchens (Timelines)
  by Richard Tames
  This history of food discusses the types of foods and cooking methods used by cultures from the hunters and gatherers of 18,000 B.C. to Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Middle Ages and all the way to futuristic farming. It's filled with interesting illustrations and fascinating facts.
  
  
• How My Family Lives in America (Aladdin Picture Books)
  by Susan Kuklin
  This book tells the story of three children, each with an immigrant parent. For each family, the foods they eat, the names of different dishes and their eating customs are discussed. The book includes three recipes - one African, one Puerto Rican, and one Taiwanese.
  
  
• The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body (Magic School Bus)
  by Joanna Cole
  Very popular, interesting series details the process of digestion through a fantastic journey inside the body. One page has a side bar that actually shows the pyramid food groups and warns against eating too much junk food!
  
  
• What Food Is This?
  By Rosemary Hausherr
  Photos of a wide variety of foods and children accompany a question/answer format that discusses 18 different foods featuring questions like how they are grown or processed.

For All Ages/Unidentified

• Cows Are Vegetarians: A Book for Vegetarian Kids
  by Ann Bradley
  
  
• The Organic Adventures of Tucker the Tomato
  by Rey Ortega and Amanda Moeckel
  
  
• The Race Against Junk Food (Adventures in Good Nutrition) (Adventures in Good Nutrition)
  by Anthony Buono
  Tommy and the Snack Posse (which includes vegetable people) win a footrace against junk food.
  
  
• The Vegetable Show
  by Laura Krasney Brown
  Watch vegetables do a little vaudeville in their attempt to dance and sing their way onto the plates and the hearts of kids. Kids will truly be tempted by the delightful characters including the Tip-Top Tomato Twins and Bud the Spud.
  
  
• How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (Dragonfly Books)
  by Marjorie Priceman
  Since the supermarket is closed, the reader is led around the world - to Italy, France, Sri Lanka, England, Jamaica and Vermont - to gather the ingredients for making an apple pie.
  
  
• I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato (Charlie and Lola)
  by Lauren Child
  Lola's sister Charlie convinces her to eat fruits and vegetables. For example. Charlie calls mashed potatoes "cloud fluff from the pointiest peak of Mount Fuji."
  
  
• Grandpa's Garden Lunch
  by Judith Caseley
  Take a trip down to the garden with Sarah and Grandpa and learn the basics of gardening. Kids will learn about how various foods grow. They will also see why "Patience is a virtue."
  
  
• Bread, Bread, Bread (Around the World Series)
  by Ann Morris
  With large photographs, this book depicts the wide variety of breads from around the world. From India to Mexico, from Peru to Indonesia, from Ghana to Greece, international breads are shown.
  
  
• Bread Is for Eating
  by David and Phillis Gershator
  Mamita explains how bread is created and sings, "El Pan es Para Comer" ("Bread is for Eating"). Music and lyrics in both Spanish and English are included.

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