What’s for Lunch? How Schoolchildren Eat Around the Globe

This survey of foods that inter-national children eat for school lunch emphasizes differences while pointing to the interconnectivity of world ecology. Visually, the focus is on the food, which appears in vivid photographs (often on lunch trays), joined by large blocks of text broken up with modest cartoons of schoolchildren. In Nantes, France, lunch consists of salad, roast chicken or fish, vegetables, cheese, and fresh fruit or a tart; in Tokyo, it’s sardines and rice. In Afghanistan, children eat “high-energy biscuits” provided by the World Food Programme. Curtis crafts a holistic conversation about health, poverty, and sustainability: the availability of free school lunch in Brazil has helped decrease child malnutrition by 73%, while processed foods in American school lunches (“Brand name food such as Domino’s Pizza and KFC are sold at more than one-third of U.S. public schools”) contribute to obesity in children. Ages 8–up. (Oct.)