Fun Party Food

K-Gr 3—A lack of focus makes the audience for these titles difficult to pin down. Some of the recipes rely heavily on boiling, cutting, slicing, and frying in oil and have little that a young child could complete independently, and yet the artwork could be right out of a toddler's picture book. The "Sponge Cake to Decorate" recipe in Party Food provides no guidance for decoration beyond illustrations, not even a list of suggested ingredients or a recipe for icing, and in Pizza, the "Ideas to Decorate a Pizza" include illustrations of decorated pizzas, but again no lists of ingredients. Other recipes are missing important details for novices, such as a recipe that calls for puff pastry to be tied with kitchen string but never mentions its removal and one that says to marinate in the refrigerator for a half hour without an explanation of what that means. The titles could be used with a lot of adult help and guidance, but with the plethora of cookbooks out there with strong kid appeal and child-friendly recipes, there is no need to stock your pantry with this series.—Heather Acerro, Rochester Public Library, MN