Library Love {4}: Cooking Books

Linking up with a gentle mother to share the best of our library pile this week.

Treasures from our Checkout Pile…Plus!

My kids love to help in the kitchen.  They like learning about ingredients, they like watching a dish develop, and they like tasting things.  Don’t get me started on how much they like to mix and stir.  Some of our favorite shows– MasterChef Junior, The Great British Baking Show, and Cupcake Wars– involve cooking.

Knowing their propensity for all things kitchen, I put some books on hold at the library on this theme.  These are the best picture books about cooking from this week’s library haul.

 

Fannie in Fannie in the Kitchen:  The Whole Story from Soup to Nuts of How Fannie Farmer Invented Recipes with Precise Measurements is part Mary Poppins, part Julia Child.  As she teaches little Marcia to cook, she writes down recipes in her notebook which is still a famous cookbook.

 

 

 

 

Tomie DePaola delivers again with Pascual and the Kitchen Angels.  Vocations, serving the poor, cooking–I don’t know if there’s any way this book could squeeze in another great theme.  This might be put onto our elite “books to actually own” list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Growing up I watched Julia Child in The French Chef on PBS and appreciated her bubbly personality.  Am I the only one who watched Julie & Julia and wished that the whole movie was about Julia?  What a gal!

Minette’s Feast focuses on Julia and her cat.  All dialogue is taken from actual letters, and it feels authentic in its attempt to capture the joy and zest for life that Julia Child possessed.

But– this is not a boring biography.  The language engaged my kids, too.  They appreciated the ongoing joke about Minette the cat preferring mouse to Julia’s cooking.  Can it be that there are two books from this week’s haul that might be worth the purchase?!?!

 

 

I <3 books with Spanish words.  We haven’t done any formal language work, so I seek out books where the kids can figure out meaning based on context clues as well as hear pronunciation.

Nacho will only eat gazpacho, until his Mami decides to teach him to make it himself if he’s going to be so picky.  Great rhyme.  Great Spanish.

 

 

 

 

In Sharing the Bread, everyone has a job to do to get ready for this old-fashioned Thanksgiving.  There is beauty in the simplicity of gatherings of years past.  Bonus– not too many words on the page and rhyming text.  That means I’m more likely to stay awake while reading this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This might be a little cheat-sy, but these are the cooking books we already own.  In case you want to do a little kitchen unit study in your house as well, these would be some other fun titles to read.  🙂

 

Why, yes it would be fun to think up a recipe pairing for each story.  Pasta with Strega Nona?  Blueberry jam with Blueberries for Sal?  Bon appetit!  

Do you have any library treasures to share?  I’m always working on putting a batch on hold for next week! 🙂

 

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PS– Although the goal is to suggest books for your family’s next library trip, if you happen to order something using these Amazon links, we receive a small commission at no cost to you!  Thanks!