NummyBooks

Handstand Kids Mexican Cookbook

Handstand Kids Mexican Cookbook

Yvette Garfield

Illustr. Kim DeRose

Recipe Editor: Cricket Azima

Winner TD Monthly Top Toy 2008

YouTube video

Ages 4-8

Hardcover, 52 pages

10.4 x 10.1 x 1.1 inches

(packaged with red, child-sized oven mitt)

Handstand Kids, LLC

ISBN: 978-0979210723

$28.00

Buy the set

The second in the Handstand Kids cookbook series (the first features Italian foods) and bearing an endorsement by Food Network’s celebrity Chef Aaron Sanchez, this kid-friendly Mexican cookbook had me at hello. I especially love Mexican cooking, and cooked with my son from the time he was old enough to lick the spoon up until the day he left home having mastered several of Mom’s recipes.

Young, aspiring cooks can look to the book’s Handstand Kid characters as friendly peer role models as they and their parents (help is required) navigate the pages of these fun and easy recipes. A great multicultural teaching tool, the book clearly illustrates common cooking utensils and ingredients and gives their names in both English and Spanish. Making full use of these pages, each recipe can provide a hands-on lesson in the language and culture of Mexico.

Recipes are given a helpful pictorial ranking of one to four avocados (sliced open, pit showing) based on their level of difficulty. A Level One Avocado recipe can be made by a child with very little help, and a Four-Avocado ranking means the child will need an adults help with the entire recipe. And the recipes — Tilapia fish tacos, Chicken tostadas, and more — yummy! Children will be thrilled to make and eat these healthful foods while learning from (and with) their grownups.

Full of recipes emphasizing healthful, fresh, whole foods, the cookbook comes with a bright red kid-sized, padded oven mitt — both packaged in a reusable, resealable tortilla bag. Green as well as good for you.

If all this wasn’t enough to make my earth-motherly mouth water, the book’s author, editors, and publisher encourage kids and parents to cook as a gift of love to others, or as a project to raise money for charitable causes. A page on the publisher’s website, Stir It Up, suggests a few worthy organizations.

Whether you give this book as a gift or enjoy it with your own family, you’ll be encouraging children to appreciate another culture and language, learn basic math skills necessary to cooking, eat nutritious foods, and to feed and help others. This one’s a winner in more ways than one!

Ceci Miller owns CeciBooks, an editorial and book publishing consultancy that empowers authors to write, publish, and market irresistible books that uplift and inspire. Ceci has written, co-authored, and edited books with bestselling authors and experts since 1988. See new and popular book projects. Also . . . Find expert information on writing, publishing, and marketing a book in CeciBooks Chats (Getting Started series is FREE).A graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Ceci Miller is also the author of two published children’s picture books, and former contributing editor for Darshan, an international magazine. A student of yoga and meditation since 1976, Ceci leads seminars that explore language as a vehicle for personal transformation. Based on her book Sacred Visitations, and the popular book she co-authored with John Lee, Writing from the Body, Ceci’s work (both with CeciBooks authors and in public programs) blends writing, intuitive guidance, and contemplative practices that connect right brain creativity with your true intention.