Five Great Kids' Cook Books

Sometimes it really is helpful to have a guide of sorts, especially when you're dealing with your kids. These books should help you jump into cooking with your child (or children).

1. How to Cook the Perfect Day is a perfect, mini-cookbook - just the right size for a child. With about a dozen, earthy recipes and beautiful paper-cut illustrations by  the wildly talented Nikki McClure who we discovered through her lovely alphabet book, Awake to Nap, shortly after our older son was born.

2. Fanny at Chez Panisse: A Child's Restaurant Adventures with 46 Recipes is a charming (and charmingly illustrated) book that gives recipes and lessons about food from the perspective of a little girl named Fanny, who happens to be Alice Waters' daughter.

3. Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes: A Cookbook for Preschoolers and Up by Mollie Katzen of the Moosewood restaurant cookbooks - several people recommended this series for its accessible recipes and pictorial instructions.

4. The River Cottage Family Cookbook by famed head-to-tail eater and real foods advocate, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. A good friend gave me this wonderful tome of recipes and projects to try with kids at various ages as a gift when our first son was born. Wonderful pictures, too.

5. Salad People and More Real Recipes: A New Cookbook for Preschoolers and Up also by Mollie Katzen - see above. More fun, pictorial recipes!

A few other resources you might find useful:

• Cooking With Your Kids - the post that started me thinking about all of this stuff in the first place, includes a bunch of suggestions for activities and links to good articles on the topic as well as my musings.
• 25 of the Very Best Kids' Books About Growing, Cooking and Eating Food - a big round-up of all our family's favorites plus some great recommendations from friends and readers.
• Kitchen Tools For Little Hands - beware, you may want to buy everything... it's all so cute!