Nonfiction Monday -- Healthy Snacks

Healthy Snacks by Mari C. Schuh. A Pebble Plus book from Capstone Press, 2006. Part of the Eating with MyPyramid series.

How can we entice kids to eat healthy snacks, instead of over processed, fatty ones? This book aims at the Kindergarten/ first grade new reader by using several sentences on the left and a photograph which bleeds all the way out to the edges on the right.
(Preschool teachers will have no problem using this for their classes, too.)

It's not in the taller than wide easy reader format, though. It's in a wider than tall picture book format. Which means that our library has placed it in the nonfiction cook book area, not in the easy reader nonfiction.

Every photograph has kids eating healthy snacks -- even though the words don't specifically name them. For example, on page 5 the children are eating raisins and yogurt, with an orange in the table. But the words say,"Small healthy snacks help you grow strong." I recognize "ants on a log" on the cover, but nowhere does it tell you how to make that snack. (although -- all you have to do is look at it and you can tell that it's celery with peanutbutter and raisins.)

Since this series's purpose is to explain the 'new' food pyramid, it includes a picture of it with a suggestion to go to the government website for more information. Hmm, sending you to a website doesn't sound helpful, does it? Ah, the next page lists the food groups from the pyramid.

Does the author make a written connection between the pyramid and the rest of the snacks discussed? No. (although an adult can easily see which group each snack comes from. A teacher might extend this book by having the children guess which food group is represented on each page.)

The photographs are multi-racial, multi-generational, and I even saw a downs syndrome child in one.

Other titles in this "Eating with MyPyramid" series include:
Being Active
Drinking Water
The Fruit Group
The Grain Group
The Meat and Beans Group
The Milk Group
The Vegetable Group

More links to Nonfiction Monday book reviews can be seen here.
-wendieO