Favorite Green Kids Books: To Market, To Market

I stumbled across To Market, To Market by Nikki McClure at our library, and want to heartily recommend it to families with older preschoolers and younger elementary.  The illustrations are simple and inviting; they look like classic woodcuts, or a similar style.  But what really caught my attention was the writing.  This is an interesting book for an adult to read.  In fact, it was one of the few we packed for vacation (this is a special honor because on vacation, I know I’ll read the same few books over and over).

The plot is a mother and son go to a famer’s market to get food for the week and they learn about the food/product (one of the items is dyed cloth) that each vendor is bringing.  I know there are lots of books about where food comes from, but this one goes a step beyond.  The apple page talks about how the man grafts scions to root stock, there’s a page about how to smoke salmon, another about how to dye cloth.  It was interesting and informative but not over my four year-old’s head, either.  The only problem with it is that it did feel a little long to read every word when all I wanted to do was get my son in bed so I could do something else.  But on those occasions, anything would feel long (and this book lends itself to being able to skip parts anyway).