Yum, yum, yum, Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert and Everyone Eats by Julia Kuo are two books that are packed with delectable illustrations of good things to eat. In Everyone Eats, I especially like how children are shown where foods come from and how they can be used. For instance (in the illustrations below), we see that berries can be used in muffins, nuts can be used to make almond butter, lettuce can be used to make a salad, and so forth. And while many children enjoy all of these foods, author Julia Kuo highlights that birds, squirrels, deer, bears, and many other animals enjoy some of the very same foods.
In Eating the Alphabet, Ehlert doesn't leave a space on the page untouched as fruits and vegetables seem to pile up from begging to end. In many ways the book reminds me of Edible Colors as it's full of more advanced fruit and veggie vocabulary like endive, gooseberries, huckleberries, kumquat, and kohlrabi. My only complaint is that while the illustrations are quite lovely, they are not always as accurate as I would like. For example, cherries and currants look so similar that I'm not sure a child would be able to tell the two apart---but as a whole it is a wonderful book and exposes children to a wide variety of nutritious food groups.
