Reading Spotlight

Written by Katie Edwards

Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater

by Matthew Amster-Burton

This was the perfect book for me, as someone who loves food and cooking, and is trying to raise her son to eat lots of different things [mostly unsuccessfully so far].  It even included recipes!  Lots of fun.  Here is how Amazon describes it:

“Hungry Monkey is the story of one man’s coming to realize that kids don’t need puree in a jar or special menus at restaurants and that raising an adventurous eater is about exposure, invention, and patience. A restaurant critic and food writer, now a stay-at-home dad, Amster-Burton writes of the highs and lows of teaching your child about food—the high of rediscovering how something tastes for the first time through a child’s unedited reaction, the low of thinking you have a precocious vegetable fiend on your hands only to discover that a child’s preferences change from day to day. Sharing in his culinary capers is little Iris, a budding gourmand and a zippy critic herself, who makes huge sandwiches, gobbles up hot chilis, and even helps around the kitchen sometimes.”

Bubble Trouble 

by Margaret Mahy and Polly Dunbar

This is one of my 3-year-old’s favorites, and mine too!  It’s a lot of fun to read, although it can take a few times through to get the rhythm right!  The story is about a little girl whose baby brother gets taken up in the air inside of a bubble she blew, and the attempts to get him back down safely.  Not too many picture books out there using words like “nefarious”, either!  I highly recommend it.

Katie Edwards lives in Needham with her wife and two children, ages 13 and 3.   She has a Master’s Degree in Library Science, but has been a stay at home mom for many years, so she is happy to have an outlet to share good books with others.  She loves to read [obviously], travel, try new restaurants, and gab with her friends.  Luckily she is in a book group where she can simultaneously eat and talk to friends about books!