20 Great Food Books for Your Classroom

When embracing food neutrality and adapting its messages into your classroom you may notice some of the kids’ books on your shelf don’t work anymore. We’re looking at you, Gregory The Terrible Eater.  We’ve compiled our favourite children’s books for food exploration in the classroom. Next time you’re wandering the isles of your favourite book store or flipping through an old favourite take a second to evaluate if the books support your food-neutral work in your classroom.

Does the book?

• Explore food;
• Present all food as good food;
• Embrace curiosity around food;
• Avoid food labels such as healthy/unhealthy & every day/sometimes foods; and
• Avoids judgement of food and people eating the foods?

We’ve made it easy and listed 20 of our favourite books that celebrate food while encouraging its exploration to enhance food literacy skills.

Food Exploration

• Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z – Lois Ehert
  • This is a great food exploration book to discover that wide variety of fruits and vegetables all through the alphabet. Which ones have your class eaten before?
• 100 Things to Know About Food – Usborn Book
  • Did you know British sailors were called limeys because of their diet of citrus fruit? Did you know the ancient Maya ate their money? Did you know carrots were purple until the Dutch turned them orange? If not, this book is filled with 100 fun food facts to share with your class.
• Where Does Broccoli Come From – Arielle ‘Dani’ Lebovitz
  • A must for any food explorer classroom! This book explores how plants grow, the different types of veggies and discusses, with fun pictures, how to pick, stores and eat a variety of veggies
• It all starts with a seed… how food grows – Usborn
  • From beets to peanuts and flour to wasabi, it all started with a seed. Join the visual journey of how different foods grow.

Celebration of Food Diversity

• Fry Bread – Kevin Noble Maillard
  •  “The story of fry bread is the story of American Indians: embracing community and culture in the face of opposition.” Discover what fry bread is, and how it is more than just food. Why is fry bread to your students?
• Freedom Soup – Tami Charles
  • The story of Haiti’s revolution and the New Year’s tradition of Freedom Soup is descriptive, engaging and sure makes you want to cook the recipe in the back of the book.
• What’s Cooking At 10 Garden Street? – Felicita Sala
  • This book is a beautiful story of the gathering of unique and diverse families and foods within an apartment dwelling. Each page celebrates people and food, all while providing 16 recipes for the reader.
• Bilal Cooks Daal – by Aisha Saeed
  • This delightful story about embracing your personal food culture and sharing it with friends is perfect to share with students. It even has a recipe for Chana Daal in the back that would be perfect to explore with your class.
• Stone Soup – by Jon J Muth
  • You may be familiar with the traditional stone soup but have you read it from the traditional buddha story tradition where tricksters spread enlightenment rather than seeking gain for themselves? If not this book is sure to delight.
• Bee-bim Bop! – Linda Sue Park
  • Did you know that Bee-bim Bop! means ‘mix up’ ‘rice’ in Korean? Join this family as they prepare their own dinner meal of Bee-bim Bop -including the inevitable spills when little hands help in the kitchen.

Silly Food Fun

• Monsters Don’t Eat Broccoli – Barbara Jean Hicks
  • In this fun rhyming story, monsters seem to eat everything but broccoli…but is that the whole story?
• Veggies with Wedgies – Todd H. Doodler
  • Simply fun, silly and always good for a laugh. No hidden healthy eating messages here! These veggies are simply curious and the farmer’s underwear they see hanging on the line.
• I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato – Lauren Child
  • A fun look through a big brother’s eyes as he creates funny names and connections for all the food his little sister will never, not ever eat.
• What’s Cooking? – Joshua David Stein
  • Perfect for food and culinary exploration as it dives into the important questions like “If I fry a strip of potato and a slice of tomato, can I fry a scoop of gelato?”. Perfect for engaging conversations in class.

   How Food is Produced

• • • From Seed to Pumpkin: Let’s Read and Find Out – Wendy Pfeffer
      • Explore the pumpkin journey from seed to a pie with many science tie-ins centred around the plant lifecycle.
    • Garden Day: Steph Into Reading – Candice Ransom
      • An early reader looks into a day in the garden working together to plant seeds while discovering some animal friends that come to visit.
    • We Are The Gardeners – Joanna Gaines and Kids
      • This perfectly relatable story of growth, learning and perseverance as a family goes from over-watering a single fern plant to planting and tending multiple gardens and enjoying the fruits of their labour.
    • An Orange in January  – Dianne Hutts Aston
      • This book shares the story of an orange’s journey from the blossom in “a land that glowed” to children sharing the sweetness on the snowy playground at school. This book is full of rich language, vivid art and many teaching tie-ins.
    • How did that get in my lunch box – Chris Butterworth
      • Explore together the path that all the foods in the lunchbox took together. A great book to discuss food processing in a food-neutral way.
    • Magic Ramen: The Story of Momofuko Ando – Andrea Wang
      • Enjoy this inspiring read of the story of Momojuko and how he worked tirelessly to develop an easy instant ramen product after watching the people op Japan struggle with food insecurity following World War II.