Good Enough to Eat: A Kid's Guide to Food and Nutrition

Rockwell (illustrator of My Spring Robin; On Show and Tell Day) serves up a simple but often bland introduction to nutrition. Watercolor and colored-pencil illustrations offer close-up views of a variety of foods and introduce a cast of smiling, wide-eyed kids whose comments (presented in balloons) supplement the facts in the text. The compositions are cheerful and sometimes playful, as when a boy dressed in a skeleton costume delivers a message about the value of calcium in building and ""repairing"" bones. The palette, unfortunately, is muted or shadowy, so that the pictured foods never look very appetizing. The author discusses such basics as the importance of eating a balanced diet, the process of digestion, sources of various vitamins and minerals, etc. She concludes with a handful of nutritious, carefully written, kid-friendly recipes. The only other hands-on aspect of the volume is a vaguely outlined experiment ""to find out where fat is hiding,"" which entails rubbing foods (no specific varieties are suggested) on a piece of paper and examining it for grease stains the following day. Given the book's targeted audience, Rockwell has perhaps gone too far in streamlining her information; those above the beginning-reader level may well find the tone of both the art and the text (with the exception of the recipes) somewhat babyish. Ages 5-9. (Feb.)