picture book reviews

So glad you popped in — you’re just in time for some hot, lightly salted (with a little bit o’ butter) popcorn!

America’s favorite snack — so friendly, affordable, and accommodating — is pure magic. All it needs is a little heat and it’s more than happy to make itself. 🙂

Ever wonder how those hard little kernels manage to turn themselves into a mountain of fluffy, flavorful bites?

In Let’s Pop, Pop, Popcorn!, a brand new picture book by Cynthia Schumerth and Mary Reaves Uhles (Sleeping Bear Press, 2021), we get a “seed to snack” peek at the process of growing, harvesting, and finally popping tasty, lick-the-salt-off-your-fingers popcorn. Mmmmmm!

In jaunty rhyming verse, half a dozen enthusiastic kids tell us about each step of their special project.

Dig the ground up with a hoe.
Plant the seeds and hope they grow.
Sunshine warms them in the earth.
Raindrops fall to quench their thirst.

They work together, sharing tasks such as hoeing, planting, watering, weeding, and of course, waiting.

How excited they are to see the first shoots come up, as they work diligently to protect their tender green plants, which grow from knee high to waist high, and finally, “past our heads.”

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Tie on your apron!
Roll up your sleeves!
Pans are out, oven is hot.
The kitchen's all ready,
where do we start?

From its very first cheery HELLO! . . . to its final glorious SLURP!, this exuberant, soul-nourishing story demonstrates the good that can come when ordinary people work together to help others.

In Our Little Kitchen (Abrams BFYR, 2020), Caldecott honoree Jillian Tamaki takes us inside a bustling community kitchen, where every Wednesday a crew of hardworking volunteers prepares a meal for their neighbors.

They’re a resourceful, ethnically diverse bunch who get the job done with their no-nonsense brand of high energy, cacophonous teamwork.

Upon arrival, young and old waste no time in assessing available ingredients: “what we’ve grown, what we’ve kept, been given, and bought!”

In the garden they find ripe tomatoes and zucchini, though “the lettuce is holey,” the carrots too small. But in the fridge, a purple-haired teen boy jubilantly discovers carrots, celery and radishes.

They know how to make the best possible use of what’s on hand, cutting the brown bits off apples to make a sweet crumble, tossing day-old bread into the oven (“Soft and warm, good as new!”), and earnestly contemplating what to do with the abundance of food bank beans: “bean salad? bean soup? bean tacos? bean stew?”

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