Veggie Power, by Annette Roeder/Illustrated by Olaf Hajek, (Apr. 2021, Prestel Junior), $19.95, ISBN: 9783791374789
Ages 8-12
After profiling nature’s healing flowers in last year’s Flower Power, artist Olaf Hajek turns his illustrative magic to elevating vegetables to high art in Veggie Power. Seventeen vegetables receive the portrait treatment here, with Annette Roeder’s informative discussions on each spread giving readers a background of featured vegetables, with fun and interesting facts (fennel bulbs were stuffed into keyholes during Midsummer, to ward off bad spirits for the year), edible parts of each plant, and varieties of each. Annette Roeder makes reading about vegetables fun – honest! – and Olaj Hajek’s gallery art treatment may actually make kids tempted to try some of these beauties. (Maybe. This is not a guarantee.) A woman sports a majestic fennel bulb crown as a bird flies overhead and a man and woman make a stew or soup in front of her. Animals approach a giant sweet potato plant growing across the ground as a hand rises from the bottom of the book, bowl full of sweet potatoes in hand. A group of individuals sit around a long table, ready to dine on a giant carrot and parsnip. It’s fun, it’s surreal, it’s colorful, it’s a coffee table art book on vegetables. Enjoy.
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