From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 3-Once again, the creative team that brought readers such delicious titles as
How Are You Peeling? (1999) and
Food for Thought (2005, both Scholastic), is at it again, this time sculpting fruits and vegetables to depict things that go. An engaging mushroom figure (think Pillsbury Dough boy) leads the way as he runs and skips, skis and skates, pedals and glides under his own power. From there, the pace picks up, highlighting mechanical, long-distance vehicles, such as cars, trucks, trains, ocean liners, and helicopters. Each ingenious construction maintains the integrity of its various elements (the train consists of zucchini passenger cars on a celery-stalk track) photographed against solid backgrounds. As any librarian knows, books on transportation always move, and this one, featuring an okra airplane and a ginger kayaker paddling a fava-bean boat, may move faster than most.-
Luann Toth, School Library Journal Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
*Starred Review* PreS-Gr. 2. Like Freymann and Elffers' other books, such as
How Are You Peeling? (1999) and
Food for Thought (2005), this picture book takes a theme (here, transportation) and illustrates it with exceptionally clear color photos of ephemeral, sometimes whimsical sculptures created from fruits and vegetables. As quietly witty as its title, the book is narrated by a little mushroom man who suggests different ways of getting about: on foot or by skateboard, wheelchair, bicycle, skis, car, bus, truck, train, sailboat, submarine, airplane, blimp, or rocket. The playful text gallops along smoothly in rhymed couplets, while the illustrations work their inimitable charm. Little mushroom, radish, and gingerroot people drive around in cars made from a variety of foods: peppers, a cucumber, a sweet potato, and (wait for it . . .) a lemon. Because the pear-based helicopter (runners made of string beans, blades of peapods, and piloted by a radish head with a confident smile) is photographed slightly from below and suspended above the tops of leafy parsley stalks, it appears to hover above trees. Clean book design and vivid color reproduction ensure that the art takes center stage here. This handsome book is both a uniquely entertaining addition to preschool and primary-grade units on transportation and an irresistible invitation for children to play creatively with their food.
Carolyn PhelanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
