Kids Around the World Cook by Arlette Braman

This book takes children for a spin round the world, sampling food from many countries and cultures. Your children will learn what their global cousins eat and drink at morning, noon and night. Kids Around the World Cook has been well researched by its author, Arlette N. Braman, and feeds the young reader with titbits of historical information and comparisons as to what is eaten on the other side of the world. If your child is working on a project on world food, this book will help enormously.

The book has been divided into chapters by the time of day, whether it is breakfast, supper time or just time for a snack. As an example, at teatime in India, sweet lassi, a mixture of yoghourt, rose water and water is drunk. While naturally, the Brits have their afternoon tea, complete with tablecloth and cucumber sandwiches. The recipes are all fairly lengthy, with afternoon tea, for example, taking up ten instructions.

Another chapter is devoted to bread, with recipes for challah, a braided bread from Israel, injera, a flat bread from Ethiopia, Armenian lavash, and coconut bread from Jamaica. All these recipes give the child an idea as to how countries use grains to maintain their staple diet.

Sadly, the book is let down by poor paper and even worse drawings. But the content is good and everyone will learn something from it. However, children are drawn to books by their covers and this just might not meet the mark. In a market that has very few similar books, Kids Around the World Cook should not be cast aside purely on aesthetic grounds, though. It has found a comfortable niche and after all, children might not even be as demanding as their parents.

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Publication Details
116 pages. Photography by Gary Braman and illustrations by Jo-Ellen Bosson. £
ISBN 0471352519. Published by John Wiley & Sons.
2000

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