For classroom duty, parents are asked to bring their preschooler’s favorite book to read to the class. One of my kid’s favs is a cookbook with large step-by-step instructions, You Can Cook by Anabel Karmel. For storytime, these kids came to understand that a recipe is really a story, with characters (the ingredients), a beginning, middle and usually happy end. Okay, it had a little bit of math, but mostly the kids got to practice repeating imaginary motions for whisking, mixing, sprinkling blueberries, pouring, flipping, and plating. It seems I happened to pick a recipe most of them had eaten or made with their families. It was a lively, interactive reading – who knew you could do that with a cookbook?

You Can Cook: a step-by-step cookbook for kids, by Anabel Karmel. London: DK, 2010.