Customer Reviews

The Peanut-Free Café

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this book to my Kindergartner's class this week to prepare them for a peanut free table in the first grade lunchroom. They were silent and engaged the whole time - all of them. The teachers said it was an excellent book and that all the kids in the school should hear it. The message is great - a little allergy information and then a lot of how to be a good friend to a kid with allergies. The writing is intelligent and the illustrations are on par with current quality kid's titles. This is a great book to read at the beginning of a school year - it highlights the need for a peanut free table in the lunchroom and how to make it fun. I'm buying more copies for the library and for friends with allergy kids at other schools.

One of the most interesting thing about Gloria Koster's peanut allergy picture book is its choice to make the main character a child without a peanut allergy. Kids with peanut allergies already know how important and inconvenient it is to avoid peanuts. By showing the growing understanding of the problem from the point of view of an "outsider," Peanut-Free Cafe allows every child to learn about peanut allergies and gain perspective about the difficulties of others who suffer this problem. With lively illustrations and a clever story, this book's educational value is only icing on the cake!

I LOVE this book. This is an entertaining story with wonderful and bright illustrations. I have 2 kids with peanut allergies, and it is trying to find stories that deal with the social inevitabilities that come with a food allergy. This book is about a child who gives up his favorite peanut butter in order to partake in a special lunch routine (created by kids) with a peanut-allergic friend. If only our children's schools were so open and creative! I not only bought it for my kids, I am purchasing another copy for the school library.

although i appreciate any attempt to help classmates understand nut allergies, i felt this book focused so much on the child who loved peanut butter, that it completely ignored the trials of a nut allergic child. my 5-year-old was confused after i read this to him as he didn't feel it related to him with his potentially fatal nut allergy. also, he felt he was missing out on the joys of peanut butter because the character "simon" adored pb so much.

The Peanut Free Cafe is a very fun book to read! It teaches kids a lot about dealing with allergies in a caring way. The students in the book are regular elementary school students like in our school cafeteria. The way they deal with a new friend's allergies is great. I wish my school had a peanut free cafe. I would definately sit there everyday!

The author does a good job of illustrating how a peanut allergy may affect others and offers up but one solution to the issues that arise. This is one of the better illustrated books on this topic with lively detail, colorful pages, and an upbeat text.

I also feel compelled to adddress some of the other posts. Peanut butter is not, in fact, and ingredient in many, most, or some chili recipes. Peanut butter is, in fact, an ingredient in a *few* chili recipes. A quick search of www.cooksrecipes.com shows NO recipes including peanut butter. Out of 100 or more. None. It took an effort to even find more than 5 on a google search. The purple lollipop Simon brings to lunch is more likely to be contaminated than the chili is.

Additionally, not all peanut allergic children are advised to avoid beans. While beans are a legume (as are peanuts and peas) statistically children are more likely to be allergic to tree nuts instead of beans. Tree nuts are not related to a peanut in any way, shape, or form. With more than 3 million Americans allergic to peanuts, if beans were such a problem you'd think we'd hear about it nearly as often as peanuts. (Soy notwithstanding. We're talking kidney beans here.)

Also, as far as schools allowing children to carry their Epi-pens in their backpacks, many schools MUST do so by law. For me, it was the *requirement* by my local school that children carry their own Epi-pen in KINDERGARTEN that led me to homeschooling. Of course, the Epi-pens had to be in a locked box, but the child was being taught "responsibility" by carrying the box from place to place.

Why is it that people expect stories about a peanut allergy to be non-fiction? I have news for you, Grant and Simon are fictional. In fact, the Nutley School is FICTIONAL! Realistic to have movies during lunch? Perhaps not, but fiction generally is FICTIONAL. Doesn't the author get points for even getting the word out? For educating the public? For encouraging a "reduce the risk" solution (since we all know that completely eliminating the risk is unrealistic)? Do you want the entire non-allergic world to become absolutely convinced that everyone with a peanut allergy is unforgiving, neurotic, controlling, and UNREASONABLE?

Before you jump to conclusions, I am the mother to a 6 1/2 year old who is anaphylactic to peanuts. She almost died during her first and only reaction at the age of 20 months. She is bi-phasic, asthmatic, and has eczema (if you know your stuff, you'll know all of these raise the probability of a fatal reaction). We do not eat in restaurants, she has never even been in a bakery, our home is COMPLETELY peanut free (even from 'may contains'), all candy consumed comes from Vermont Nut-Free Chocolates, all cookies, cakes & breads are homemade, we keep EIGHT Epi-pens at all times, and I homeschool. I am NOT one to take this lightly and, of all the people I know, I am the most militant about this allergy.

Give the author a break and let's "suspend disbelief" for this work of fiction and assume the chili is peanut free. OK?
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For those of you reading this book who are NOT allergic, I applaud you. Thanks for caring.

I'm here looking to buy this book, because we've checked it out from the library many times over the past few years and my daughter still enjoys it (and now her younger sister does, too). I never knew that legumes might be 'off the list' for those with severe peanut allergies, but now that I do, I get that the moms of kids with peanut allergies are bummed about the chili thing. Still, the book is reasonably well-written and requested over and over again by my kid, so it gets 4 stars. Plus, it does alert kids to the existence of serious food allergies - which has to be a good thing, right? Oh, and I disagree wholeheartedly with the mom(s) who whined that 'the other kids shouldn't be punished for not changing what they eat because of one guy's allergy.' Please. As is pointed out in the story, those kids can eat peanut butter all they want outside of school - it's an extremely small sacrifice to make, to keep a kid safe (and not ostracize him just because he has a medical condition).

This is a really good book for educating and breaking barriers for kids with food allergies. The pictures are great and the message is fantastic. My 6 year-old asks me to read this to him frequently. My only reservation is that it is about a school which really works to include kids with food allergies in a way that most schools would not. I worry that it gives my kid false hope of having a really fun alternative place to eat in safety. Overall, it is a great read!

This is a good book that shows how you can fix food everyone can eat.

Maybe recommend for non-allergic kids. Not recommended for allergic kids. I thought this would be a fun book for my 5 year old who is allergic to peanut. I also thought it could help prepare him for school. This was not the right book for him. It made him sad that the other children were so hungry because they couldn't have peanut butter and that the main character was so sad about not having peanut butter. Like the other reviewer said, this is "fiction" but the solution to help kids want to sit at the peanut-free table was so unrealistic that you can't really let your peanut allergic child believe this is how it would be. It was just confusing for him. I imagine it would be confusing for a non-allergic kid to learn about peanut-free table from this book and then go to school to just a normal table with none of the frills described here.