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Edible Schoolyard (2008)

by Alice Waters(Favorite Author)

4.15 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0811862801 (ISBN13: 9780811862806)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

Chronicle Books

review 1: This book brought me to tears when I thought I was just opening a picture book of garden plot ideas. Loved hearing this unexpected, transformational story of how Alice, a school and her friends helped kids discover real food, heal themselves and their land, cook and eat and learn about the capability nature has to teach all things. So many great moments: the kid who was taught to cook an egg for breakfast, the mourning teenagers eulogizing a friend in the garden, the gangsters who went to the willow grove and discovered work and play. Such great stuff here. Bowled me over. Made me want to garden with the kids on my block.
review 2: This book is just delicious. The first part of the book is an essay from Alice Waters about the vision, construction, development, ... morecurriculum and success of the Edible Schoolyard she helped to develop at an urban school in Berkley, CA. The latter part of the book consists of bright, beautiful, exciting pictures from the edible schoolyard. The story is fantastic. Even now, it is inspirational to read about the school, parent, and local communities coming together for this project, but also they were doing this 12 or 15 years ago, long before it became so trendy to talk about localizing food politics. There are innumerable anecdotes which all sound almost the same - kids and community brought together and strengthened through the garden. There is a lot of joy and excitement in these pages, and it's infectious. If there wasn't already an edible schoolyard at one of our public schools, I'd be on a crusade to make one. After reading this book, I think maybe they should all have one! I was recently asked to help with a food garden at a local camp, and reading this book really amped up my enthusiasm for the project. It is a real treat if you garden with kids or have any hope of making edible gardening/landscaping kid- and family-friendly. Even if you're a crotchety gardener with no interest in bringing kids into the garden, this is a good book. The garden goes from abandoned concrete slab to lush, productive jungle in just a few years. The work, planning and ideas come from the kids. The edible schoolyard is integrated into every aspect of classroom education - science classes study plant structure and life cycles. History classes grow and grind ancient grains. Kids learn to cook together with food they grew. I just really can't say enough things about how much I enjoyed reading this. It's a really quick read, too, and heavy on pictures so you can flip through it in an evening and then drift off to sweet dreams of a world where every kid can grow & grill their own sweet corn in middle school. less

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