Review by Booklist Review
Ages 3^-6. Devious oranges, shy radishes, a socially outcast leek? All roll across the colorful pages of this novelty book. With expertly cut mouths and seed eyes, a variety of produce shows a roller coaster of emotional states--happiness, shyness, love, jealousy, embarrassment--as rhyming text asks children about feelings: "When you're angry, do you pout? Whine? Cry? Scream? Shout?" Kids will find the inherent silliness irresistible and be drawn in by the book's visual appeal: the colors are strong, the photography is excellent, and the expressions, derived from the natural lumps and bumps of the fruits and vegetables (enhanced by a few incisions), are surprisingly masterful. Adults may use this as a starting point for discussing feelings with the very young. But most likely, kids will flip through the pages for quick, easy laughs. --Gillian Engberg
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Photos of scowling oranges and gregarious scallions garnish this garden of delights from the creators of Play with Your Food. The recipe is simple and successful. Freymann and Elffers find a piece of "expressive produce" and attach two black-eyed peas for eyes. Without further ado, the veggie becomes a face, with a knobby stem or skinny root for a schnozzola; an upended mushroom has a hilarious piglike snout, while a kiwi fruit has a button nose. The animated groceries are exhibited, actual size or larger, against crisp hues of harvest gold, melon green or late-night-sky blue. Their groupings imply close relationships: lemons trade meaningful glances and a little onion cries. Meanwhile, the rhyming text draws comparisons between the emotive plants and its audience when it queries, "Wired? Tired? Need a kiss?/ Do you know anyone like this?" The plotless and largely superfluous narrative recommends expressing jealousy or affection ("When how you feel is understood,/ you have a friend, and that feels good"). It's a sentiment as healthy as an apple a day, but the book's real charm is derived from the almost-ready-made "sculptures"Äas an afterword calls them. This wish-I'd-thought-of-that compendium provides an excellent impetus for a craft session: the ingredients are cheap, and mistakes can be eaten as salad (if artists have the heart). All ages. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-An eye-catching and enormously appealing book. Freymann and Elffers frequented New York's fruit and vegetable markets, picking out particularly "expressive" onions, peppers, oranges, apples, and the like. They then created intriguing faces on the produce, taking advantage of stems and creases, carving mouths, and adding black-eyed peas for eyes. The sculptures were then photographed on solid-colored backgrounds. The "faces" clearly show an array of emotions, from excitement and happiness to frustration and confusion. Accompanied by simple rhymes ("When you have to wait, because someone is late,/are you bored? Jumpy? Worried? Grumpy?/Excited as the minutes pass?/Now your friend is here at last!"), the attractive photographs burst with color. Use this book to discuss different moods, to introduce the names of many fruits and vegetables, to identify colors, and to inspire young artists to create sculptures of their own.-Anne Knickerbocker, Cedar Brook Elementary School, Houston, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Food artists Freymann and Elffers unleash the latent personalities of fruits and vegetables by carving faces on them, then using their expressive produce to illustrate different emotions. Paired with a catchy, minimal rhyming text, their flashy color photographs of jealous tomatoes, angry oranges, proud bell peppers, and the like add zest to the standard concept book theme. From HORN BOOK Spring 2000, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Going produce shopping with Freymann and Elffers is more of a casting call than a trip to the supermarket, for they use fruits and vegetables to display a wide range of emotions. Children and their keepers will be astonished to discover how closely the wrinkles, bends, and creases in produce can mimic human feelings. The text is fairly direct, asking questions to make children think about their emotions: ``When you're angry, do you pout? Whine? Cry? Scream? Shout?'' The ridges of a red pepper, with eyes of dried peas, convey the pout, while other fruit demonstrate the rest of the query. These full-color photographs communicate most of the information; even preschoolers will be able to tell a happy orange from a glum one, and adults will smile to see an onion crying. The organic qualities of the produce are used to charming advantage, e.g., the bend of a green pepper makes the perfect overbearing profile of a bully, while a hollowed-out orange gives just the right depth to an opened-mouthed howl. Fun, and useful'what child would not be encouraged to talk about being shy when there is a cantaloupe that admits to exactly the same thing? (Picture book. 4-9)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
