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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33607003715128 | New Picture Books | LUKOFF | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
A hilarious new picture book that exposes vegetables for what they truly are--leaves, roots, flowers, and stalks--by National Book Award Finalist and Newbery Honor winner Kyle Lukoff, perfect for fans of the Our Universe series.
Chester plans to have a salad for lunch, but in order to do that, he'll need vegetables. So, off he goes to the community garden, except he quickly learns that he won't be dressing a salad anytime soon. Instead, the vegetables start dressing him down. According to them, "vegetables" don't exist!
I know what you are thinking: What the bell pepper? Vegetables are totally real! But here's the thing: Kale is just a leaf, broccoli is a flower, potatoes are roots, and celery...well, stalks. Thanks to a lively, sassy cast of talking "veggies," Chester learns a valuable lesson about categories and how they shape our understanding of the world.
With a slyly informative text and illustrations that will crack readers up, the schooling in There's No Such Thing As Vegetables will be easy to digest and is a total treat.
Author Notes
Kyle Lukoff is the author of Different Kinds of Fruit , Explosion at the Poem Factory , and many other books for young readers. His favorite "vegetable" is whichever one he's eating at the moment. He's mildly allergic to figs, will never forget his first Concord grape, and loves thinking about how language creates categories. He climbs every tree he can and once got into a fight about whether a vegetable garden could have tomatoes in it.
kylelukoff.com
Andrea Tsurumi is the author and illustrator of the books Accident! , Crab Cake , and I'm On It , and they have illustrated many more, including Mr. Watson's Chickens and the Kondo & Kezumi series. They live with their spouse and carrot-loving dog in Philadelphia. Find out more at:
andreatsurumi.com
Reviews (2)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1--3--Chester's mom wants him to get some vegetables from the community garden for a salad. This turns out to be a tricky task when each so-called vegetable he finds is sassy and unhelpful, explaining why it is not what he is seeking. Eggplant is a fruit, carrot and potato are roots, kale is a leaf, broccoli is a flower. Finally, the kale breaks it to him--there is no such thing as a vegetable. After hearing about the jobs of the fruits, flowers, roots, and leaves, not to mention how angry the beet is at having its sugar content questioned, a defeated Chester asks, "If there is no such thing as vegetables, why do people call you vegetables?" The crux of the book arrives at last. The foodstuffs question the reality of human-made categories: money, countries, states, language--and vegetables. Mind blown, Chester tells them he's going to have a sandwich for lunch instead of a salad. On the final page there is Lukoff's thought-provoking note about social constructs surrounding categories. Tsurumi's excellent illustrations give Chester and the myriad vegetables individual personalities, including some wonderfully amusing facial expressions. Her use of movement, perspective, color, and white space help move the mash-up of game-changing facts plugged awkwardly into cartoon-style storytelling forward. The almost exclusive use of speech balloons occasionally crowds the page, simply because there are so many speaking parts, but it is successful overall. The humans depicted have a variety of skin tones. VERDICT The mixed bag doesn't diminish the intriguing ideas, despite the somewhat forced format.--Catherine Callegari
Publisher's Weekly Review
Sent to an abundant community garden to gather vegetables for a salad, young Chester is quickly thwarted by the prospective ingredients--who insist that vegetables aren't really a thing--in this category-savvy picture book. Digitally finished pencil cartoons by Tsurumi (Mr. Watson's Chickens) portray the garden habitués with maximum spunk as each insists on being called by their given name and plant part rather than being labeled as a vegetable. A broccoli floret named Juanita says it's a flower, kale bundle Beatrice is a leaf, Pietro the potato is a root, and an eggplant, cucumber, and pepper (Damon, Karen, and Parveen, respectively) are "fruits, dude." Chester, who reads as East Asian, gets an informative earful via dialogue balloons by Lukoff (Awake, Asleep), whose colorful garden personalities are bound to tickle readers. So too will the idea that basic concepts can prove more social construct than fact--or, as an ear of corn explains by way of analogy, "Don't think too hard about language and how every word you say is just a collection of random sounds." An author's note concludes. Ages 4--8. Author's agent: Saba Sulaiman, Talcott Notch Literary. Illustrator's agent: Stephen Barr, Writers House. (Feb.)