A World of Food by Carl Warner

Besides the fact that I love any book about food, I just love the dedication to Carl Warner's new book A World of Food: Discover Magical Lands Made of Things You Can Eat - "To all children who love to play with their food." I don't think you could ask for a better combination of fantastic scenarios combined with scrumptious foods (although not pictured here, there is a whole landscape made of chocolate) than those that Warner serves up in A World of Food: Discover Magical Lands Made of Things You Can Eat. Warner's book combines the excitement of look-and-find books with with amazing foods that are sure to spark conversations. This is the second book for the professional still-life and location photographer and father of four and it is so much fun. Warner's images and rhyming text take the reader through landscapes made entirely of food, color by color. The rhymes are well written, served up in trios, and, best of all, they highlight the foods used in the pictures. If this isn't enough, Warner provides an index at the back of the book listing the foods used in each picture. However, this book really speaks for itself, so I'll share a few images and stanzas of poetry below..

If all the world were yellow,

A desert it would be

Of couscous, rice and yellow beans

As far as you could see.

If all the world were purple,

How lovely it would be

To live inside a garlic bulb

Beneath an allium tree.

Snug within our scented cloves

Beside a riverbed,

We'd watch as flavored oil flows

From hills of garlic bread.

And if we ever lost our way

Among the allium trees,

A garlic moon would guide us home

Through purple cabbage leaves.

If all the world were green,

We'd live in forests, fields, and woods,

Where curly kale and broccoli trees

Would be our streets and neighborhoods.

Like herbivores on forest floors,

We'd walk through fresh green herbs

And share our thyme with passersby

In leafy, lush suburbs.

We'd cross a bridge of cucumber

And climb upon a hill,

Then lay our heads in flowerbeds of parsley, sage and dill.

 Instead the world is many colors

and tastes from salty to sweet.

And with all this variety,

There's so much you can eat.

Source: review copy

Carl Warner's first book is Food Landscapes. 

If you like Food Landscapes, don't miss Look-A-Likes!

For those of you who love the creativity of the landscapes in Warner's books, don't miss Joan Steiner's amazing Look-A-Likes Trilogy. Like Warner, Steiner, who passed away in 2010, created landscapes and scenes that are fantastically fun to dissect and search for hidden objects. However, in stead of food, Steiner used every day objects in very creative ways to make new scenes. When asked the most unusual object used in her books, Steiner replied, "There is a hand grenade in the general store in the first book." The grenade became a pot belly stove. We have had two of Steiner's books in our home for years and never tire of pulling them out and poring over the pages.