Recently I read C.S. Lewis' essay on writing for children. He mentions someone commented re his detailed description of the delightful tea served to Lucy that he must have put that in because he knew children loved to read about good eating. Lewis denies it, saying that he enjoyed writing about good food because he enjoyed good eating himself! Well, who doesn't?
Certainly my book, which won a National Children's Book Award for Best Reads on 2014 appeals mainly
because children can relate to the situation, but I guess the food helps too. And certainly I enjoyed writing about the food. I plan to come up with a companion book wherein a child learns to enjoy different tastes of food. I was inspired by my first-grader's science lesson where they were asked to try different foods and classify them by taste. The classroom lesson tie-in of my first book is fractions. For the second it can be tastes.
I realize the difficulty in this is coming up with foods for some of the tastes that kids will like. Sweet--no-brainer. Even salty would not be hard (hello, French fries!). But what about sour, spicy, and bitter. Still, it can be done.
In fact, my son loves sour and somewhat spicy foods. My children both love pomelo. They'll eat ones that are too sour for my taste! And my son likes spicy ramen noodles. They both like wasabi-flavored potato chips and prefer dark chocolate to milk as I do.
It's clear from this how you get children to like different tastes. You have to show them you enjoy varied foods. Offer to share your food but don't force them to taste. Sometimes they'll ask to try it if they just see you eating it.
And avoid showing your aversions to healthy foods. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean they won't. My daughter brought bitter greens once from a farm where they had their field trip. She had picked them herself, so of course we had to eat them and show our appreciation. I didn't relish the bitter taste, but I kept quiet and smothered them with dressing. She, on the other hand, perhaps because she picked them, liked the bitter greens just as they were. She doesn't like salad dressings except honey mustard, which we didn't have on hand. So she ate them mixed with cucumbers and tomatoes. And liked them. She enjoyed their crunch and didn't seem to mind the bitter taste.
Children can really surprise you when it comes to what they will eat and what they won't. So just keep introducing new foods to them, and you may be surprised.
They'll love to eat if you show them you love to eat! And I certainly do. There's a lot of food in my other books as well. I'll share about them next time/
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