March 2021 Prime Picks

The Culinary Corner

Broke Vegan
Saskia Sidey
Hamlyn
9780600636984 $14.99
www.octopusbooksusa.com

Broke Vegan: Over 100 Plant-Based Recipes That Don't Cost the Earth is a top pick for vegans and would-be vegans who eschew the usual high-priced specialty ingredients too many other vegan cookbooks embrace.

Many of these easy recipes can be whipped up in 20 minutes and all are family-friendly, designed to appeal to those on a budget, with limited time, who may be cooking for vegan and non-vegan family members alike.

From an Indian-spiced Curried Leek & Potato Puffs and a Foolproof Glorious Gazpacho to a Carmelized Shallot & Tomato Tart or Loaded Potatoes with Smoky Spicy Beans, these recipes are accessible, appealingly illustrated with color photos, and perfect for new and seasoned vegan cooks looking to simplify dishes and cook on a vegan-friendly budget.

The Chicken Bible
America's Test Kitchen
America's Test Kitchen, Publishers
9781948703543 $40.00
www.americastestkitchen.com

There are already so many poultry cookbooks on the market that one might wonder at the need for yet another; but if only one such book were to be chosen for a collection, The Chicken Bible should be at the top of the list.

Chicken is one of the major meats chosen by home cooks for everyday meals. This collection focuses on meals for busy cooks that use all parts of the chicken, from wings to breasts and thighs, as well as the entire bird. It packs in almost two hundred recipes, most of which can be made in 45 minutes or less.

Another feature which differentiates this chicken cookbook from competitors is its international influences, which range from Asia and Europe to mixed adaptations between countries, such as a Sweet and Savory Chicken with Pineapple and Broccoli or a Mexican Chicken Mole Poblano.

Small, good-quality color photos present not just finished dishes, but illustrate step-by-step processes such as preparing poultry to cook in foil.

If only one chicken cookbook were to be chosen for a home or lending collection, it should be a book that lives up to its all-inclusive name. The Chicken Bible is such a bird.

Salad of the Day
Georgeanne Brennan
Weldon Owen
9781681886473 $25.00
www.weldonowen.com

There are other salad cookbooks on the market, but Salad of the Day is a standout from the crowd for several reasons. It sports lovely color photos on every facing page, it features 365 recipes for year-long dishes, and it provides a seasonal salad-making approach that includes dishes for winter, a notoriously difficult time of year to be serving up a salad.

The reason why many of these dishes are possible is because they expand the notion of what makes a salad beyond the usual mix of greens and dressings.

Examples include a Chopped Chicken Salad with Lemon-Tarragon Dressing, a Grilled Calamari salad, a Padron Pepper Salad with Green Harissa, and a Duck Breast Salad with Walnuts and Orange.

The focus on pairing a range of greens with heartier meats and ingredients makes for a fine gathering especially strong for its international flavors and focus on ingredients that go far beyond the usual concept of what constitutes a salad. All these elements make Salad of the Day a go-to cookbook for any cook who would serve up more salads as sides and main courses alike.

Tinned Fish Pantry Cookbook
Susan Sampson
Robert Rose
9780778806813 $19.95
www.robertrosa.ca

Tinned Fish Pantry Cookbook features over a hundred canned fish-based recipes for all kinds of dishes, and comes from an author who received the Cordon d'Or-Gold Ribbon International Culinary Academy Award.

Such fish can be blended into soups, form the foundation for wraps and sandwiches, and can be incorporated into casseroles and pies in different ways. All of these methods and more are explored in a cookbook designed for those who might initially consider tinned fish as limiting as tuna fish sandwiches or tuna casserole.

Those who love fish will find recipes range from a hearty Louisiana Clams and Corn and a range of fish burgers and cakes such as a Nicoise Tuna Burger to international fare evident in a Thai Tuna Salad or a Latin American Salmon Picadillo.

Tinned fish can be curried, blended into eggs and sandwich mixes, or can form the foundation of a main dish. This appealing cookbook covers all the options, vastly expanding the home cook's concept of what can be done with tinned fish.

Under the Olive Tree
Anna Maggio
Unicorn
9781913491086 $30.00
www.unicornpublishing.org

Under the Olive Tree: Memories and Flavours of Puglia presents personal recipes handed down through oral instruction between mothers and daughters, and represents a unique collection that reveals details about Pugliese Italian cooking.

Puglia is in southern Italy. Its seasonal ingredients and recipes differ from other parts of the country. This is evident in dishes such as Sarcella, a typical Easter cake Anna Maggio remembers her mother making; Baked Pumpkin with Cod; or Stuffed Artichokes in Tomato Sauce Served with Pasta.

More than just a recipe collection, Maggio adds personal family memories and connections which reflect on not just generations of cooking, but the ingredients and region of Puglia.

The result is a mouth-watering collection spiced not only with recollections, but the author's own line drawings of ingredients and dishes.

Reviewer's Choice

All Aboard
Geoffrey Weill
University of Wisconsin Press
9780299330804 $28.95
www.uwpress.wisc.edu

All Aboard: A Memoir of Travel and Obsession comes from a man who became obsessed with travel at a young age, pursuing dreams which led him around the world.

Although Covid has limited many such dreams, they live on in travelogues such as this, which present vignettes that capture the heyday of foreign travel and encounters with other cultures. Its blend of entertaining and educational descriptions reveal why travel is so enlightening, surprising, and delightful.

More than just a travelogue, Geoffrey Weill's account embraces his eccentric family and their equally original friends, discussing how the travel industry and attractions changed over the decades.

Armchair travel readers who long to visit a bygone era in which the journey was as important as the destination will find the trip in All Aboard is embracing and warm, juxtaposing a 'you are there' feel with personal revelations that are intriguing, fun, and a pleasure to read.

The Bears Ears
David Roberts
W.W. Norton
9781324004813 $27.95
www.wwnorton.com

The Bears Ears National Monument was a new park in southeastern Utah created by President Obama in 2016 and demoted by the Trump administration just a year later.

Its scenic landscapes and rare natural history are now threatened by drilling, grazing, and threats to its preservation as never before; but in order to understand these threats and the importance of a relatively new monument little-known to the average American, this book is essential.

David Roberts is personally well familiar with the region. It's one of his favorite places. Here, he blends his personal exploration of The Bears Ears with its environmental history, an examination of its importance, and the stories and controversies surrounding its development and status.

While The Bear's Ears may initially seem of relatively small concern in the scheme of environmental preservation history, it holds many treasures and lessons that readers need to know in order to understand its true importance.

This is a book that should be in every environmental or park history collection as an example of the preservation struggle as a whole and Utah's history in particular.

Gardening in Summer-Dry Climates
Nora Harlow and Saxon Holt
Timber Press
9781604699128 $29.95
www.timberpress.com

With California getting dryer every year, a sea change is happening within its gardening communities that is changing the traditional perception of moderate, temperate year-round weather. This makes Gardening in Summer-Dry Climates: Plants for a Lush, Water-Conscious Landscape an especially important acquisition for libraries in arid areas where winters are wet and summers quite dry.

Plants can adapt to these weather changes, but it helps to have the details on which ones are best suited for dry summer/wet winter conditions—and that's where Gardening in Summer-Dry Climates excels over others.

Its attention to selecting plants and designing landscapes able to handle both dry and wet seasons takes the guesswork out of designing a garden for today's new climate challenges.

From shrubs and flowers to succulents, grasses, and herbs, this book packs in all the recommended hardy plants a gardener could want. This makes it a snap to not just choose the best plant, but incorporate it into the right landscape choices.

Color photos abound, as well as charts and details that streamline a gardener's selection and landscape process. This book is especially highly recommended for California's changing environment, as well as any area experiencing unusually hot summers paired with unusually wet winters.

Radiant
Liz Heinecke
Grand Central Publishing
9781538717363 $28.00
www.grandcentralpublishing.com

Radiant: The Dancer, the Scientist, and a Friendship Forged in Light is a science history that delves into the story of American modern dancer Loïe Fuller, who heard about Marie interested in the strange new glowing element Curie was studying.

It was a friendship unusual in many ways, crossing technology with art and a passion for innovation and creativity that fostered a powerful connection between two seemingly disparate individuals.

Those already familiar with Marie Curie's biography and discoveries will find added facets of psychological and scientific inspection enhance this approach to their friendship, and will find the intersection of biography and technology to be intriguing. Their story requires no prior familiarity with either individual to prove satisfying and thoroughly engrossing.

Young Adult/Children

Bruno the Beekeeper
Aneta Františka Holasovà
Candlewick Press
9781536214611 $19.99
www.candlewickpress.com

Bruno the Beekeeper: A Honey Primer is translated by Andrew Lass, and is recommended for advanced elementary-level to early middle grade readers as a basic primer on bees, honey, and natural history.

Bruno the Bear's job as a beekeeper necessitates that he know a lot about bees, from the differences between a drone and a queen to how beeswax is made and used, how to listen to bees over the seasons to gauge their health, how to feed and maintain them through the seasons, and the different work that occurs for a beekeeper in the summer, spring, winter, and fall.

These lively, specific insights on the work of being a beekeeper go far beyond most natural history discussions of bees for young readers, making Bruno the Beekeeper: A Honey Primer an exceptionally well-detailed pick that young readers and many an adult will enjoy.

Dial/Penguin
www.penguin.com/kids

Adults looking for fold-out picture books for home education and leisure reading will find Julia Donaldson and Sharon King-Chai's Counting Creatures (9780593324530, $20.99) a gorgeous survey that pairs natural history with counting.

A bat has a lift-the-wing flap with one baby under it. Turn the page to find a cut-out wild dog with four pops 'nosing and nestling'; then part the seas to find that a duck has 9 ducklings "swimming and snacking, practicing quacking."

As the story questions what creature has more babies, it builds a math foundation which is fun and revealing.

Keri Smith's Wreck This Picture Book (9780593111024, $17.99) offers a relatively complex concept to young picture book audiences—that a book only becomes alive when it is explored; and that what some people call wrecking, others might call living.

Books are meant to leave the shelf and enter the hearts and minds of the reader. This book, in particular, invites young eyes to absorb possibilities which may go against the usual adult rules about books, such as not throwing a book, folding its pages, or drawing on it.

An interactive discussion invites the young to wake up their senses and analytic skills, challenging the concept of what a book is and does.

Again, adult assistance will be required for the very young, to explain some of the wide-ranging ideas this book fosters about imagination and reading.

Both are fine titles that kids and read-aloud parents will both appreciate.

Just Beyond the Very Very Far North
Dan Bar-El
Simon and Schuster
9781534433441 $16.99
www.simonandschuster.com/kids

Just Beyond the Very Very Far North provides advanced elementary to early middle grade readers with the ongoing adventures of Duane the polar bear and his arctic friends in a fine sequel to The Very, Very Far North.

Newcomers to Duane's antics will find just as much to enjoy about this new collection of animal friends as prior fans.

Kelly Pousette's black and white illustrations accent a warm story with far north references as the tale probes a lively friendship between the animals and a new series of dilemmas in which they must confront not only problems, but their own emotional approaches to solving them.

From a clever snowy owl who can see the meaning under the words that are chosen to Duane's rejection of learning a secret, a fun series of escapades keeps middle grades engaged in a story reminiscent of Wind in the Willows or the animal friendships in Winnie-the-Pooh.

Mornings with Monet
Barb Rosenstock
Knopf
9780525708179 $17.99
www.rhcbooks.com

Mornings with Monet receives fine illustrations by Mary Grandpré and explores the young artist's choice to draw what came to be known as Impressionist works, changing the art world.

How did he produce his amazing drawings?

Picture book readers with good reading skills will relish this survey of Monet's process of observing the world around him and translating it into his paintings.

Mary Grandpré's evocative color drawings accent this process as Barb Rosenstock captures Monet's contention that the world of the Seine is his studio, following his work on a studio boat and how he captured the magic of the river he loved.

Would-be young artists seeking inspiration and insight will find Mornings with Monet a compelling investigation of how an artist derives vision and inspiration from a blend of the world around him and his interpretation of it.

Sleeping Bear Press
www.sleepingbearpress.com

Ages 4-8 will appreciate Cynthis Schumerth's lively picture book celebration of popcorn in Let's Pop, Pop, Popcorn! (9781534110427, $16.99), which offers a kernel-by-kernel discussion of how popcorn is grown, harvested, and prepared before it lands in the eater's bowl.

A fun rhyme leads young picture book readers through the snack and its evolutionary process, adhering to STEM educational requirements as it moves through science and nature topics, adding hands-on activities kids can learn from.

Mary Reaves Uhles provides large-sized, fun drawings to complete the attraction of this poppin' fun exposé.

Angie Karcher's The Lady of the Library (9781534111028, $16.99) is illustrated by Rachel Sanson and tells of a ghost who haunts a public library. She's faced with a dilemma when the building is slated for demolition. Where can she go? Obviously, books need to be involved.

A book-loving girl becomes her partner in saving the library so the ghost can keep her home.

This saga is based on the true story of the "haunted" Willard Public Library in Evansville, Indiana, but provides a broader perspective on books, literary, and urban preservation than young readers might anticipate from its ghostly promise.

Discussions of libraries noted for being "haunted" will satisfy this audience as they absorb the library history that's the foundation of this story.

Don't Call Me Fuzzybutt! by Robin Newman (9781534110731, $16.99) receives whimsical, fun drawings by Susan Batori as it tells of a sleepy bear who is a light sleeper, easily disturbed by the animals around him.

His friend Woodpecker is involved in a home construction project, and the two once-friends become enemies as their different purposes are at odds.

Can "featherbutt" and "fuzzybutt" overcome this great obstacle to return to being friends? A fun story of adversity and problem-solving evolves.

Treemendous
Bridget Heos
Crown/Random House
9780525579366 $17.99
www.rhcbooks.com

Treemendous: Diary of a Not Yet Mighty Oak receives fun illustrations by Mike Ciccotello to compliment the first-person story of a little acorn's growth through the years.

"They say that from the smallest acorn, the mightiest oak tree grows. I hope that's true." The acorn opens this story with a reflection on his future potential and, as years pass, adds a whimsical series of insights on other forest trees, from walnuts (who are a little nutty) to pines ("that one family who always goes overboard with Christmas decorations.").

Kids thus learn natural history facts about various trees and their different places in the ecological system as the little acorn evolves and changes.

What a delightful primer on tree ecology! Its inviting tone and approach is truly "treemendous".