Library Lovers? Month: Children?s Book Recommendations

By Diane Ruyack

Library Lovers’ Month is a month-long celebration of school, public, and private libraries of all types. This is a time for everyone, especially library support groups, to recognize the value of libraries and to work to assure that the Nation’s libraries will continue to serve.

Childhood obesity is an important issue in the United States, and throughout the world. Teaching children about proper nutrition is no easy task so in order to promote positive attitudes about food and healthy eating, a nutrition book for children must keep them engaged, and most importantly, allow them to have fun learning!

Here are a few that would help children to learn about nutrition and health:

Over Under in the Garden

Pat Schories, 1996 (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

Beautiful ABC book with full-page watercolor illustrations featuring a vegetable or fruit and an animal for each page.

Grandpa’s Garden Lunch

Judith Caseley, 1991 (Greenwillow Books)

A colorful book with about 1-3 sentences per page. A girl helps her grandpa put in a garden, then later comes for lunch and notes how every part of lunch has something from the garden, from the table centerpiece to the carrot cake.

The Amazing Milk Book

by Paulette Bourgeois, Catherine Ross and Susan Wallace

This book describe milk’s chemistry, nutritional value, production and use as a component of cheese and other foods. It’s enriched with anecdotes and humor.

A Book of Fruit

by Barbara Hirsch Lember

While most children recognize fruit in a bowl or in a supermarket, some have never seen fruit growing on a tree or a bush. This well-photographed book makes the connection between the fruit and where and how it grows before it arrives at the supermarket. Photos of single servings of fruit appear on pages opposite photos of where the fruit grows.

Bread, Bread, Bread

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.

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.

Dinosaurs Alive and Well; A Guide to Good Health

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.

D.W. the Picky Eater

by Marc Brown

Arthur the Aardvark’s sister, D.W., is a picky eater. The family leaves her at home when they go out to eat until D.W. decides she might be missing something good by being so picky.

Extra Cheese, Please!: Mozzarella’s Journey from Cow to Pizza

by Cris Peterson

This well-photographed book describes how cheese is made, from a Wisconsin dairy farm until a cheese factory ships the final product across America.

It?s a Spoon, Not a Shovel

by Mark and Caralyn Buehner

When a crocodile is eating an armadillo, should she put her napkin (a) on her head, (b) in her ear or (c) on her lap? This is a humorous etiquette book for young children.

Make Me a Peanut Butter Sandwich and a Glass of Milk

by Ken Robbins

This book describes the production of three foods: peanut butter, bread, and milk…from the farm to the manufacturing plant to the store to the home.

Milk From Cow To Carton

by Aliki

Aliki takes readers on a guided tour that begins with grazing cows, proceeds through milking and a trip to the dairy and ends with some different foods made from milk

Pizza!

by Teresa Martino

A brief history of pizza for beginning readers.