The Kids' Multicultural Cookbook : Food and Fun Around the World

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot

Food is the thread that ties together kids from around the globe. They cook and eat a variety of interesting and unusual dishes such as potato cookies, peanut butter soup, and apple pancakes. The book is filled with recipes, descriptions of multicultural feasts, and there are lots of activities (matching breads, eating utensils, manners etc. with countries). The photographs show real kids from around the world engaged in the fun of cooking and eating all of these delicious foods.

School Library Journal

Gr 3-6-In this whirlwind tour of 41 countries, readers are given a quick dose of culture from each one. There are one or two recipes (their difficulty is rated by one, two, or three spoons) for each place and an introduction to a child who lives there. Occasional riddles and "fun facts" are inserted, such as the world record for watermelon-seed spitting. Foreign words are included with pronunciations. Readers are encouraged to try home-baked tortilla chips, ginger ale made from ginger root, and peanut butter soup. The writing style is breezy and inviting, and the illustrations are a combination of black-and-white cartoons and photographs. For a more straightforward approach, try Carole Albyn and Lois Webb's The Multicultural Cookbook for Students (Oryx, 1993), which contains information and one recipe from each of 122 countries. For more complete treatments of individual countries, try the "Cooking the...Way" series (Lerner).Carolyn K. Jenks, First Parish Unitarian Church, Portland, ME