Eating the Alphabet

Today’s alphabet book is a simple concept  but the choice of objects for each letter and the art combine to make a very special book.

 

EATING THE ALPHABET
Fruits and Vegetable from A to Z
by Lois Ehlert
HMH Books 1989

“Apple to Zucchini,
come take a look.
Start eating your way
through this alphabet book.”

Eating the Alphabet is a perfect introduction for young children to the names, colors, and varieties of fruits and vegetables. There are foods most children will recognize (though not always eat) and quite a few that are unfamiliar including huckleberry, gooseberry, and xigua.  It would be fun to take a child to a farmer’s market and try to find the various fruits and vegetables available in each season, and then taste them!

Lois Ehlert art is done in bright, colorful collages that glow on the pages. She includes a glossary with descriptions, pronunciation, and origin of each fruit and vegetable from A to Z.

 

 

 

 

Have you ever seen or tried Ugli Fruit? I haven’t but now I’m on the lookout.  The author  tells us “that it is thought to be native to the Far East and to Jamaica. It grows on a tree and is said to be a cross-breeding of the tangerine and the grapefruit.”