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Find out moreAre you a fan of Cooking and Food books? Check out all our Cooking / Food book selections, read reviews, download extracts and you can order the book too!
“Nut loved his sister and Leaf loved her brother, but everyone knew they were NOT like each other!” So the scene is set for Lu Fraser’s glorious rhyming ode to being yourself, a cheering, amusing tale that’s brilliantly brought to live by Mark McKinley’s simply stunning illustrations - they’re a veritable rainbow of energy and characterful detail. While adventurous Leaf loves to shoot her bow and swim icy lakes, Nut has no outdoor pursuits skills whatsoever. Rather, he prefers to bake, and harbours a secret passion for “slicing and dicing and mixing and whisking and really pink icing!” All of which means, come Viking Sports Day, Nut’s contribution is something of a disaster, until he hurls his cake in the Great Throwing Race and Chief Olaf recognises his culinary talents. Great fun, and there’s no arguing with its wise, warm-hearted message - “happiness comes when you just be yourself.”
“Nut loved his sister and Leaf loved her brother, but everyone knew they were NOT like each other!” So the scene is set for Lu Fraser’s glorious rhyming ode to being yourself, a cheering, amusing tale that’s brilliantly brought to live by Mark McKinley’s simply stunning illustrations - they’re a veritable rainbow of energy and characterful detail. While adventurous Leaf loves to shoot her bow and swim icy lakes, Nut has no outdoor pursuits skills whatsoever. Rather, he prefers to bake, and harbours a secret passion for “slicing and dicing and mixing and whisking and really pink icing!” All of which means, come Viking Sports Day, Nut’s contribution is something of a disaster, until he hurls his cake in the Great Throwing Race and Chief Olaf recognises his culinary talents. Great fun, and there’s no arguing with its wise, warm-hearted message - “happiness comes when you just be yourself.”
Fizzing with friendship and a sense of adventure, while not shirking from (gently) exploring gritty real-life themes (food poverty and online bullying), Ewa Jozefkowicz’s The Cooking Club Detectives is perfectly pitched for Primary age pupils who like to get their teeth into mission-driven stories with heart. Erin and her mum have moved from North London to a new home, where she makes wonderful new friends, but quickly realises the differences between those who have it all and those who have less, such as herself. When Mum loses her job and decides to make a go of her long-held dream to work in her field of passion (cookery), Erin touchingly steps-in by enlisting her new friends to make Mum a cookery blog website, though trolls rear their ugly heads in the comments. At the same time, Erin loves the new Cooking Club she’s joined, but the community centre it’s held in has been sold, so she and her pals (plus detective dog Sausage) set about finding out who’s bought it and - crucially - saving the centre that’s so important to the local community. Pulling together, following your dreams and making a difference - this is a lovely heart-warming story.
Inspired by Bake Off or Masterchef but don’t know where to start? This is the book for you! Equal parts information and inspiration, it’s full of recipes kids can do easily, whether tasty snacks for film-night or an entire dinner. It explains techniques and runs through a safety checklist, then encourages kids to get cooking. The recipes are created by Helen Burgess of Little Cooks Co. and just the right level for the age group, while for extra fun there are related games and activities to do while the food is cooking or cooling, all designed to pass on more information. With colour photos and bright, lively design, the pages look good enough to eat and this is bound to whet the appetite of junior chefs.
A Julia Eccleshare Pick of the Month March 2021 | Filled with curious and intriguing illustrations and with an original text filled with unusual and fascinating facts, this handsome, large format picture book takes a completely new look at vegetables. Accompanying each vegetable, or sometimes a pair of vegetables as with a carrot and a parsnip which are similar although they are described as ‘an odd couple’, there is an elegant text telling something of the history of how each one comes to be on our tables, something of how each one grows and something about the traditions about how we eat them. The delights in this book are perfect for sharing for all ages.
Rows of adorable little veggies tuck themselves up for the night in their flower beds in this charming and whimsical picture book. The potatoes are closing their eyes, the tired-out tomatoes humming lullabies, and the little aubergines are already dreaming, after all, nothing’s more exhausting than growing day and night. The text is short and its rhythm and rhymes make it just right for bedtime reading while the pictures of the vegetables, cosy and smiling in their beds, will set the liveliest toddler in the mood for sleep. A worm tunnels through each page and at the book’s end he too is stretched out for the night fast asleep, his one shoe lined up tidily at the foot of the bed. Gorgeous!
Hope Jones is a smart 10-year-old who is determined to save the world. She’s already persuaded her family to change their shopping habits, now she wants them to turn vegetarian. And not just her family – Hope sets her sights on making her school cut out meat too. Winning her classmates round is one thing, the school dinner ladies quite another. The more Hope tries to change things, the more complicated she realises it is, but armed with facts and information, plus a huge amount of passion, Hope is able to persuade people to alter their habits and to make a real difference at home and school. The story is told via Hope’s blog and it makes for sharp, lively, often very funny reading. Readers will be gripped by Hope’s campaign and will finish the book just as well informed as Hope and fully aware of how the choices we make every day affect the world. The story will set readers thinking about how democracies work too and should spark all sorts of conversations.
March 2021 Book of the Month | Calling all parents facing food-related meltdowns! After introducing your food-fussy progeny to this instructive interactive picture book, you’ll never need to make a meal of meal-time again. Recommended by paediatric dieticians, it introduces children to a rainbow of delicious food through a fun family-oriented story. What’s more, the story can be lived off-the-page during real-life trips to the supermarket, helping to convince hard-to-please kids to try new foods and, as a result, it’s also certain to please parents frazzled by food-related friction. The story begins with Mummy despairing of the food in the cupboard. “She couldn’t find anything she wanted to make for dinner… I’m so bored of beige!” she grumbles. So, after deciding that “what we need is some colour!” Mummy heads to the supermarket, where she challenges her two toddlers to pick three kinds of food, the only proviso being that they must be red. Then follows a delightfully illustrated page of ravishing red foods that invites readers to decide what they’d choose. Each day they return to the shop, where the kids are issued with a fresh challenge - pick three yellow foods, three green, three orange, three purple. By the time Saturday comes around and the kids find Mummy eating a boring beige croissant, they make her a special colourful breakfast.
The young person's guide to a plant-based lifestyle | Full of information and sensible advice, this is an excellent guidebook for any young person who is considering turning vegan, or who just wants to cut back on meat and dairy. For one thing, it is packed with delicious and faff-free vegan recipes, easy to follow, easy to make and certain to be a hit with everyone in the family, even dyed-in-the-wool carnivores; but it’s also full of equally useful and appealing information on the whys of being vegan. Niki Webster explains it all in a way that feels friendly and do-able, making sure to answer FAQs on getting enough protein and vitamins as well as on the best vegan substitutes, and laying out clearly, but with a sense of passion, why veganism is about more than just food and diet. The illustrations and design make this look good enough to eat, and it successfully provides lots of food for thought too.
After the success of Yoga Babies, the best-selling duo Fearne Cotton and Sheena Dempsey are back and this time the babies are hungry! Mealtime is a joyous and often messy occasion and these babies are shown thoroughly enjoying their food. From picnics to birthday parties, cooking and shopping the book carries a positive message about being relaxed and having fun with food. Written in rhyming text and accompanied by detailed and brightly coloured artwork this is a perfect book to share at bedtime, and might help soothe a worried fussy eater!
September 2019 Book of the Month | This lovely book is packed with a whole host of ideas so that parents, with the help of their children, can throw a fabulous party themed around Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s much loved Room on the Broom picture book. It’s all there, from invitations to party games and decorations, to tasty food – cauldron sandwiches and ice cream potion anyone? All the ideas are fun but straightforward and well-explained, while extras helpfully include photocopiable and traceable pages. Guaranteed to make the party preparations lots of fun while the two hours party time itself will fly by!
Discover the seriously impressive science that goes on every time you cook or eat. This children's book explores the science of food by asking questions you're hungry to know the answers to, and putting them to the test through fun experiments. Science You Can Eat will transform your kitchen into a lab through fun food experiments. Cooking is chemistry, and the fun science experiments - such as tricking your taste buds, making slime taste delicious, and investigating some of the strangest flavours around will prove it. This exciting kids book tackles all the tasty science questions you have about food, plus plenty more that you hadn't thought of! Once you understand science, you understand food, so find out why popcorn go pop as you test it out for yourself, explore how taste is affected by smell, then discover whether eating insects is the future of food. Examining interesting ingredients and exciting eating, as well as peeking into the future of food, Science You Can Eat helps you understand what's happening with our food and why. Each page is guaranteed to leave you hungry for more.
