Are you looking for ways to extend and enhance nutrition education with children? Do you sometimes feel like you need new materials to teach healthy eating habits? Why not consider storybooks?

Certain storybooks will complement many of the food and nutrition concepts young children need to learn. Are you going to teach a unit on where food comes from? Ask your librarian about titles such as Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington, One Bean by Anne Rockwell, Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert, Ruth Krauss’s The Carrot Seed, and Milk from Cow to Carton by Aliki. These books also lend themselves to hands-on gardening, tasting, and cooking activities. Hands-on experiences--such as a helping the children grow pumpkins or tend a garden with all the ingredients for soup--will make the storybook come alive.

Maybe you are planning a food theme based on a specific meal. Sometimes children need a gentle reminder of how important breakfast is to their health and energy, and many storybooks can reinforce that message. For starters, look for Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle, Tomie dePaola’s Pancakes for Breakfast, Laura Numeroff’s If You Give A Moose A Muffin, Max’s Breakfast by Rosemary Wells, or Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. Imagine the children’s delight when you follow-up a plate of pancakes with a matching story!

Since many children eat lunch at childcare, the midday meal is a great candidate for a story, too. Denise Fleming’s Lunch, featuring a hungry mouse, is a natural choice, as is the play rhyme book Peanut Butter and Jelly by Nadine Westcott. Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice introduces children to the months of the year along with a popular lunch food.

Nutrition education in early childhood is often centered on food groups. Many storybooks feature breads and grains, including Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, The Unbeatable Bread by Lyn Hoopes, Sun Bread by Elisa Kleven, and Eric Carle’s Walter the Baker. The worldwide appeal of breads and grains is celebrated in several storybooks with a multicultural emphasis, including Ann Morris’s Bread, Bread, Bread, the bilingual (English and Spanish) Bread is for Eating by David and Phillis Gershator, and Norah Dooley’s trilogy Everybody Bakes Bread, Everybody Cooks Rice, and Everybody Brings Noodles, which introduces children to many types of grains through stories set in diverse neighborhoods. These books may lead to discussions with children of different cultures and the foods people eat. What an opportunity to expand children’s worlds through food, a daily part of their lives!

Fruits and vegetables are often celebrated in children’s storybooks. As you encourage the children to eat a variety of foods and expand their awareness of the many fruits and vegetables that are available, try sharing Lois Ehlert’s Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z. This book colorfully depicts foods from artichokes to zucchini and is sure to spark children’s curiosity about unfamiliar foods. The Wild Bunch, by Dee Lillegard and Rex Barron, gives fruits and vegetables personalities using rhyming text. In Vivian French’s books Oliver’s Vegetables and Oliver’s Fruit Salad, Oliver discovers, with his grandparents’ gentle help, that fruits and vegetables are tastier than he thought.

Apples, a favorite fruit of children, headline The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall, The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons, and How To Make An Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. Steven Kellogg’s Johnny Appleseed is a storybook that looks at apples in the context of an appealing, and real, folk hero. Look for other books that explore fruits, such as The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood, Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey, and Cherries and Cherry Pits by Vera Williams.

A frequent challenge of feeding young children is successfully introducing vegetables into their diets. Storybooks that may support your efforts to encourage children to eat vegetables include No More Vegetables by Nicole Rubel, Corn is Maize by Aliki, The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin, and The Victory Garden Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta and Bob Thomson. A Russian folktale inspired The Gigantic Turnip by Alexsei Tolstoy and Niamh Sharkey. Other stories of giant vegetables include Jan Peck’s The Giant Carrot and Aubrey’s Davis’s The Enormous Potato.

Another food-related challenge of early childhood is the picky eater. Storybook authors have recognized this phenomenon of early childhood and responded with a number of books that address the issue in ways that appeal to children. Look for D.W. the Picky Eater by Marc Brown, Gregory the Terrible Eater by Mitchell Sharmat, and I Will Never, Not Ever, Eat a Tomato by Lauren Child, to support your efforts to expand the picky eater’s diet.

You may provide care for children who have a specific health or nutrition concerns related to food, such as allergies or diabetes. There are several excellent storybooks for children that explain nutrition and food related conditions. They are not as common in library collections as the other books listed here, but they can be quite useful to the childcare provider.

Food allergies are the subject of several storybooks, including Nicole Smith’s Allie the Allergic Elephant (peanut allergy), Aaron Zevy’s No Nuts for Me! (nut allergy), Elizabeth Nassau’s The Peanut Butter Jam (peanut allergy), Ellen Weiner’s Taking Food Allergies to School (multiple food allergies), and Robyn Rogers’ No Lobster, Please! (seafood allergy). Books about diabetes include Even Little Kids Get Diabetes by Nadine Westcott and Rufus Comes Home by Kim Gosselin.

Young children love humor, and there are books about food that will tickle their funny bones. There are several retellings of the story about the old woman who swallowed a fly, as well as a number of humorous food storybooks, including Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway, and On Top of Spaghetti by Gene Barretta.

Storybooks can bring new dimensions to nutrition education with children. In addition to the food and nutrition concepts the books teach, they also promote literacy skills.

Marna Holland, Ed.S., CFCS, visiting assistant professor in the birth-K program, Western Carolina University.

Children’s Books about Food, Eating and Health, North Dakota Nutrition Council & North Dakota State University Extension Service, www.ndsu.edu/ndnc/foodbooks

Children’s Books about Nutrition, American School Food Service Association, www.asfsa.org/childnutrition/education/kidbooks.asp

Children’s Books that Encourage Healthy Eating, University of Missouri Family Nutrition Education Program, http://outreach.missouri.edu/fnep/childrensbooks.htm

Eating, Reading and ‘Rithmetic: Choosing Books about Food for Kids, Iowa State University Extension, www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/N3617.pdf

Nourishing Children with Books, Virginia Cooperative Extension, www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/preschoolnutr/348-950/348-950.html

Nutrition Education: Popular Books for Children, University of Wisconsin Extension, Marathon County, www.uwex.edu/ces/cty/marathon/wnep/books.html