Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Playing With Food: An Activity Book
Activity Book
For ages 6 to 8
Cicada Books, 2016 ISBN: 978-1908714312
Food plays an important role in our lives. It sustains us, it makes it possible for us to grow, and it keeps us stay healthy - if we choose to have a good diet. Food preparation also offers us the opportunity to connect with others, and there is nothing quite like sitting down with family and friends to enjoy eating delicious meals together.
In this excellent activity book, Louise Lockhart takes us on a wonderful foodie and food-filled journey. She begins with the basics by asking us to list our favorite foods in eleven categories. She also asks us to list five things that we would never eat. Not surprisingly, this list is called the black list.
Next she challenges us to describe how eight foods make us feel when we eat them. Trying to convert tastes and emotions into words can be challenging, so this activity might cause some food adventurers to scratch their heads for a little while.
The next activity is even more interesting. In it Louise talks about the ways in which certain combinations of tastes, surprising combinations, can work, even though they really shouldn’t. For example bacon with maple syrup on it is really delicious even though bacon is salty and syrup is sweet. Louise invites us to come up with other unusual combinations that are interesting and tasty.
Next we get to explore breakfast. We have to draw our breakfast and our teacher’s breakfast. We learn about what people around the world eat for breakfast. For example a popular breakfast in China is a rice dish called congee. In south India they eat a steamed rice and lentil cake called idli and a fried lentil or veggie fritter called vada.
The kitchen is our next port of call. We get to give one kitchen a makeover, and we get to look at a lot of the equipment that one finds in kitchens. We even get to fill a fridge with food by drawing eatables on the shelves.
This activity book is packed with things to do. There are drawings to complete, recipes and experiments to try, crossword puzzles to fill in, word searches to solve, and so much more. The interactive nature of this book will keep children engaged and busy, creating and thinking for hours.