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Two children wander through a day finding the answer to the question: how do you eat color?
How Do You Eat Color? by Mabi David, translated by Karen Llagas, illustrated by Yes Doctor. Eerdmans, 2025. 40 pages.
- Reading Level: Picture books, ages 0-4
- Recommended For: Ages 0-8
What do colors taste like? Two siblings, along with a curious chameleon, set off to find out. They wander through a colorfully surreal landscape, sampling different foods and vegetables. There’s lots of tastes and smells along the way.
Green moringa is earthy while red has a range of tastes. White is both refreshing coconut juice and funky smelling onions and garlic. By the time the children drift off to sleep, after watching a muskmelon sunset in a carrot sky, readers will probably have experienced a range of tastes by association and might just find themselves craving yams or plums.
AN INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE
Originally a Filippono picture book, now translated to English, How Do You Eat Color? will introduce young readers to some unusual flavors. The illustrations are a lovely introduction to colors yet their content is uniquely surreal featuring food and little else. (Unlike the classic Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ illustrations that featured both food and detailed daily life.)
Detailed endnotes provide a further guide to eating the foods in the book while answering three questions: “What is it? How does it help my body? How can I try it?” The next page explores the benefits to personal health and the planet when we eat more vegetables and fruits instead of meat. A final page provides a helpful list for parents on “How Families Can Eat More Colors Together.”
Bottom Line: Worth checking out, but a little too focused on teaching, this is a sweet, if slightly surreal, exploration of the question: how do you eat color?
Recommended Reading at Redeemed Reader
- Review: Another interesting thought-experiment related to color (but not to eating) is What Color Is God’s Love?
- Reviews: Garden to Table and What the World Eats are more food-related books your kids may enjoy.
- Reviews: Cora Cooks Pancit is a cute picture book about a girl who cooks up a Filipino speciality!
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