The Fruits We Eat

March 1, 2015

K-Gr 3-Gibbons, the author of The Vegetables We Eat (Holiday House, 2007), now turns her attention to fruit. She begins by stating the importance of incorporating it into a healthy diet, the difference between annual and perennial varieties, and various ways to consume them (fresh, juices, sauces). The author provides details about how fruits grow: on plants, bushes, trees, and vines. Each section contains an informative, eye-catching heading; succinctly presented text; and delightful, cheery watercolor illustrations. Gibbons depicts examples of fruits that grow on different kinds of vegetation (for instance, pineapple plants, cherry trees), provides labeled cutaways of their parts, and describes how they are harvested. Readers learn the differences between wild and cultivated berries and what parts of various fruits are planted to produce more. The text also briefly covers large industrial farms and small fruit growers, fruit processing and transportation, and the fresh produce available in stores and farm stands. Kids will learn some surprising facts (for instance, olives are fruits), and a trivia section at the end may encourage further research. Stoke children's enthusiasm by pairing this useful overview with April Pulley Sayre's rousing Go, Go Grapes!: A Fruit Chant (S. & S., 2012). VERDICT A charming addition to nutrition and food units.-Marianne Saccardi, Children's Literature Consultant, Greenwich, CT

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2015
The prolific Gibbons tackles fruits-how they grow, their parts, and what portions we eat. Beginning with facts about perennial and annual fruits and how many servings children should aim for each day, the book then looks at how fruits can grow on plants, bushes, vines, and trees. Good vocabulary is introduced and defined along the way-botanist, pollination, cultivated. The middle of the book is taken up by individual looks at 13 different kinds of fruits that show cutaway views labeled with parts, the whole plant/bush/vine/tree, and some of the popular varieties-for grapes, golden muscat, red flame, and concord. This is followed by a discussion of growing seasons and climates, large farms versus backyard ones, harvesting fruit and getting it to market, and some other fruits that were not featured in the text, including star fruits, apricots, and persimmons. A final page lists more fruit facts and two websites (one for the United States, one for Canada) about food guidelines. The text sometimes gets lost in Gibbons' busy and full pages, and while her illustrations are detailed and specific for each type of fruit, the watercolors won't make mouths water. This lacks the information of other nonfiction titles and the pizzazz of April Pulley Sayre's Go, Go, Grapes! (2012), but it may be just the ticket before a school trip to a farm. (Informational picture book. 4-8)