cover image PB&J Hooray! Your Sandwich's Amazing Journey from Farm to Table

PB&J Hooray! Your Sandwich's Amazing Journey from Farm to Table

Janet Nolan, illus. by Julia Patton. Albert Whitman, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8075-6397-7

This deconstruction of the sourcing of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich opens in a kitchen, where a boy slathers bread with the key ingredients. The question, "But where does the food come from?" (the grocery store) leads to another: "But where does the grocery store get the food?" Nolan (A Father's Day Thank You) moves further and further back in time, introducing readers to the trucks that deliver the goods to the store; the bakeries and factories where the ingredients are made; the places wheat, peanuts, and grapes grow; and the planting of seeds for these crops. The cumulative narrative repeats each step of the process with every new sequence, which makes for somewhat clunky reading, especially since the text wavers between full sentences and clipped phrases: "Bread in the bread aisle, peanut butter stacked on shelves, jars of jelly lined up in a row. Put in a shopping cart, pay on the way out." Patton's spindly-limbed, wide-eyed characters have a lively energy, offsetting the repetitiveness of the text. Ages 4%E2%80%937. Author's agent: Steven Chudney, the Chudney Agency. Illustrator's agency: the Bright Agency. (Sept.)