Gold Award Winner for the 2015 USA Best Book Awards in Children's Educational
Gold Award Winner for the Foreword Reviews' 2014 IndieFab Book of the Year in Juvenile Nonfiction
"With so many drive-thru and grocer’s freezer food options, it’s easy for kids to get disconnected from where their food actually comes from. With Garden to Table: A Kid’s Guide to Planting, Growing and Preparing Food, kids will learn what it really takes to get their favorite foods on their plates—from seed to frying pan."—Daily Parent, "The 15 Best Cookbooks for Kids"
"Ranging from hearty soups to yummy desserts, several kid-tempting recipes utilizing the fresh ingredient end each section, effectively bringing home the garden-to-table concept. Cooking terms are defined at the book’s beginning, and a photo glossary introduces ingredients and kitchen tools. Full-color close-up photos illustrate each phase of planting and preparing, while also depicting a bounty of fresh produce and delicious-looking dishes. Use this appealingly presented and user friendly guide as a classroom resource."—Curriculum Connections, School Library Journal
"This vibrant instructional manual and cookbook celebrates the satisfaction of making food, from its most basic form in the garden to culinary creations in the kitchen. ... Parents, teachers, activity group leaders, and young gardeners and chefs will find plenty to read—and plant and cook—together." — Booklist
"...these six common garden inhabitants are the perfect introductory plants to get kids interested in cultivating their own plot of land and preparing their own food. ... Accompanied by clear, colorful photographs, the instructions for growing, harvesting, and cooking the food is perfectly suited to young readers. The yummy recipes provide a satisfying conclusion to the work kids put into their gardening endeavors." — Foreword Reviews
"Budding gardeners who love to cook will find a treasure trove of information here." — Kirkus Reviews
"...kids will certainly embrace this simple, easy-to-use, and craftily laid out photographic guide to planting their own herbs and vegetables, harvesting them, and preparing their own dishes with them... This is a highly recommended and timely title that offers a wonderful introduction to the entire garden to table process.” — Cats Meow, Baker & Taylor April Issue
"For our Father’s Day family lunch, the kids and I prepared Big-Time Basil Parmesan Dip and Tempting Twice Baked Potatoes. And both dishes were delicious! The recipes include lots of pictures and my primary school kids only needed a little help along the way. Having been written by an American author, I was a little concerned that this book wouldn’t cater for an Australian audience and seasonal differences. Now, having read the book, I can declare my concerns unfounded! Sure, there a couple of terms that may need “translation” but other than that this book is universal."—Gardening 4 Kids (Australia)
Previous Reviews for 6-Book Series
"The instructions are succinct and easy to understand and are accompanied by clear color photographs and illustrations." — School Library Journal, Series Made Simple (April 2012)
06/01/2014
Gr 4–7—This attractive guide instructs readers in the cultivation of basil, carrots, green beans, lettuce, potatoes, and tomatoes. Instructions for growing the produce have been given with container gardening in mind, offering a practical alternative for readers with limited space, but they could easily be adapted for those with garden plots. The overall presentation is top-notch, providing clear, concise instructions heavily complemented by the book's visually rich format. High-quality photographs accompany every cooking term, ingredient, and kitchen tool as well as practically each step of the growing process and recipes. While maintaining the focus on the freshly grown foods featured, the recipes do sometimes call for prepared ingredients readily available in grocery stores. The recipes themselves are an eclectic blend of some classic staples such as salsa, salad, and oven fries, and more unusual fare: pickled carrots, basil cake, and sushi rolls. All are appealing, and most seem quite manageable by kids with minimal adult supervision. A sophisticated volume that is sure to garner kid interest while whetting appetites, this is a great tool for bridging the world of agriculture with culinary sustenance. Gardening and cooking collections would benefit from this title, and it would be an ideal guide for those wishing to start a new venture with kids.—Rebecca Gueorguiev, New York Public Library
2014-04-09
Hengel encourages middle-grade readers to grow and cook their own food.A compilation of Hengel's six books about growing and cooking with basil, carrots, green beans, leaf lettuce, potatoes and tomatoes, the formatted sections make it easy for readers to find the information they need to succeed in both growing and cooking with these foods—though it does also make for some repetition of information. Each section includes spreads about the focus plant and its variations, the conditions it needs and how to sow the seeds, its stages of growth, harvesting the plant and a Q-and-A page. These informational pages are followed by five to six recipes (minus nutritional information and sometimes the colored circles that outline the numbered steps), including Creamy Carrot Soup, Tasty Thai Noodles & Basil, Sassy Citrus Zest Beans, Sort-of Sushi Rolls, Cheddar Potato Cakes and Tomato Pie in the Sky. Three safety symbols used on the recipe pages alert chefs to sharp tools, hot materials and nuts. Extensive frontmatter includes a three-spread pictorial guide to cooking terms, three more spreads featuring an alphabetized pictorial list of ingredients (fish sauce, blue cheese and horseradish among them!), and two spreads of labeled kitchen tools. A URL directs readers to Abdo Publishing's website for more informational websites (eHow among them) and Burpee's online seed catalog.Budding gardeners who love to cook will find a treasure trove of information here. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 8-13)
