Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. It will be released August 10, 2021 by Honest History.
I really wanted to love this book. I was excited by the premise and the table of contents. It promises fascinating information about food and eating behaviour from around the world. As it turns out, the information is indeed there. I appreciate the thorough and thoughtful details about global cuisine. I liked the inclusion of history. I appreciated the recipes.
It's the layout of the book leaves much to be desired. I like the colour coded pages. I like the inserted information boxes. The problem is that essentially, this book is way too text heavy. In addition, the sentence structure is complex for most elementary aged readers. The format of the book lacks the kinds of text features that would compliment the content and make it easier to grasp. For example, this is a book about food from around the world, yet it doesn't include one map.
Food is sensory. It's at least an experiential combination of visual, olfactory, and flavour. Capturing this in a book was never going to be easy. In this case it seems like the publishers didn't make much of an attempt. There are many text features that would have improved this title. The small coloured illustrations that are included helped a bit, but are not nearly enough. Photographs (and lots of them) would have been a huge improvement!
If you are just looking for bits of data then this book might be ok. The problem in using it as a research resource is that it doesn't include an index or a bibliography.
I would think long and hard, and explore other options before investing in this book for my school library.
It's the layout of the book leaves much to be desired. I like the colour coded pages. I like the inserted information boxes. The problem is that essentially, this book is way too text heavy. In addition, the sentence structure is complex for most elementary aged readers. The format of the book lacks the kinds of text features that would compliment the content and make it easier to grasp. For example, this is a book about food from around the world, yet it doesn't include one map.
Food is sensory. It's at least an experiential combination of visual, olfactory, and flavour. Capturing this in a book was never going to be easy. In this case it seems like the publishers didn't make much of an attempt. There are many text features that would have improved this title. The small coloured illustrations that are included helped a bit, but are not nearly enough. Photographs (and lots of them) would have been a huge improvement!
If you are just looking for bits of data then this book might be ok. The problem in using it as a research resource is that it doesn't include an index or a bibliography.
I would think long and hard, and explore other options before investing in this book for my school library.
This sounds like a great premise for a book, but it's a shame that there's so few photographs and so much complicated text that kids may find it hard to enjoy. And it's also a shame that they didn't include an index or bibliography. Thanks for the thoughtful review!
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