Topic: Top-Notch Non-Fiction

World of Food is a bright, colourful and well-laid-out non-fiction book that introduces children to the fascinating journey that food takes before it reaches their plate.  It covers this from a historical and modern point of view.  Historically, it talks about the Stone Age, Roman banquets and the Silk Road.  It also helpfully indicates both the similarities and diversities of our current diets.  For example, the pages on dairy and grains cover a lot of the different worldwide breads and dairy-producing animals.

Each spread is clear and contains a single topic.  My Year 3 class found these spreads very useful when they were researching and preparing presentations on the different types of food produced in the UK.  It would also be useful if comparing diets around the world.  For example, the pages on fruit cover fruit from many locations. The book does not shy away from introducing new vocabulary, I know now what a “drupe” and a “pome” are.

At the back of the book is a very thought-provoking section on issues in the world food supply such as greenhouse gases and the future of food.  There is also a recipe for bread. A detailed and colourful section on festival food introduces several religious and secular feasts: Christmas, Diwali, Passover, Eid, Thanksgiving and Chinese New Year.  This section is excellent as it describes the foods but also their place at the feast table. It is also broader than just European stereotypes, covering,  for example,  the Christmas foods of Ethiopia and Venezuela.

World of Food is a well-researched book with broad detail around its subject and would be an asset to any KS2 classroom.