Early Book Review: Adventures in Veggieland: Help Your Kids Learn to Love Vegetables with 101 Easy Activities and Recipes by Melanie Potock

Adventures in Veggieland: Help Your Kids Learn to Love Vegetables with 101 Easy Activities and Recipes by Melanie Potock is currently scheduled for release on February 6 2018. It features a year’s worth of family-friendly recipes along with strategies for helping kids learn to become more adventurous eaters over time. Parents will learn how to introduce a new vegetable every week, plus creative and engaging ways to expose their kids to new foods. The book features 20 vegetables, organized by season, each with activities and recipes highlighting the program’s three phases to vegetable love: expose, explore, expand. The kids are involved in every part of the activity process from washing the vegetable to eating delicious food they helped make. 

Adventures in Veggieland: Help Your Kids Learn to Love Vegetables with 101 Easy Activities and Recipes is a valiant attempt to help parents with children that boycott vegetables to give them a try, and to have some fun along the way. I like that the book is organized by season, which makes getting started and planning that much easier. I like that some of the activities give the chance for kids to feel, taste, and smell the veggies before eating them even becomes part of the conversation. I also liked the idea of getting the kids involved in the preparation and cooking of the veggies. I find that being included in the work and discussion makes most kids more willing to give something a try. I can see how it can, and would, work with many children. I also see how parents that are willing to go to these strides are already on the path to kids willing to try and do new things. However, I feel like there are too many kids that this will not work with, such as those with sensory issues. Of course, that being said my daughter would adore these activities, and some of the recipes, while my husband and son would run in terror since my husband is not a veggie fan and my son is very sensitive to flavors and likes things as bland and boring as possible.  

In short, for those that are willing to go all out in getting their families to eat better, particularly in the vegetable department this would be a great addition to a home library. For those just looking for some tools to get a few more veggies, and break down some barriers, I would suggest borrowing the book from the library and trying the suggestions that might work in your home.