A Fine Dessert: Perfect Picture Book Friday

I know. I haven't been here in a while. But I've been busy. And this book has been sitting beside my laptop for WEEKS, waiting for me to have time to write up a PPBF post for it. And today is that day! And so, I present to you another fabulous book to add to Susanna Leonard Hill's Perfect Picture Book Friday list.

Title: A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat

Author: Emily Jenkins

Illustrator: Sophie Blackall

Publisher:Schwartz & Wade, 2015, fiction

Age Range: 4-8 years

Theme/Topics: cooking, family life, history,

First Page:A bit more than three hundred years ago, in an English town called Lyme, a girl and her mother picked wild blackberries. Their hands turned purple with the juice. The thorns of the berry bushes pricked the fabric of their long skirts.

Synopsis (from Amazon): In this fascinating picture book, four families, in four different cities, over four centuries, make the same delicious dessert: blackberry fool. This richly detailed book ingeniously shows how food, technology, and even families have changed throughout American history.

In 1710, a girl and her mother in Lyme, England, prepare a blackberry fool, picking wild blackberries and beating cream from their cow with a bundle of twigs. The same dessert is prepared by a slave girl and her mother in 1810 in Charleston, South Carolina; by a mother and daughter in 1910 in Boston; and finally by a boy and his father in present-day San Diego.

Kids and parents alike will delight in discovering the differences in daily life over the course of four centuries.

Resources: There are fabulous notes in the back from both the author and illustrator about their research that can be used. Talk about all the different changes that are shown from one century to the next - in technology, food, etc. AND of course, there is a recipe for blackberry fool in the book too - make some!!

Why I LOVE it: This is a FABULOUS look into our history - both visually and through the words. The four families are so different, and that is shown in the wording and illustrations - but they also have much in common. The repetition is beautifully done. The whole BOOK is. Definitely a keeper (and I WILL try the recipe myself - maybe over Spring Break, which starts today here!). And if you pick it up, be sure to check the illustrator note out to find out how she created the endpapers. (Not saying any more!)

Hope you'll give this book a look - and check out the OTHER perfect picture books for today at Susanna's blog - and Susanna's ever-growing list of wonderful picture books. 


My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer. Psalm 45:1