Lentil soup

Two mice sit at a table set with bowls of steaming lentil soup. The younger brother asks, "Where did this soup come from?" and the older tells him to choose from four answers: Their uncle made it. The soup store. The soup fairy. A door-to-door salesman. But this is only the beginning of the little mouse's questions. Claiming that the soup is too hot to eat, he asks about each ingredient, starting with "Where do lentils come from?" The older mouse realizes that his brother is stalling, but because he can't resist sharing information, he keeps getting drawn back into the conversation. In the end, the little mouse can't eat his soup because it's "too cold." A recipe for lentil soup is appended. The story unfolds mainly through dialogue in speech balloons, and the brothers share a childlike sense of humor. Set against white backgrounds, deft line drawings with color washes create diverting, fanciful scenes involving dragons, fairies, or personified celery alongside perceptive illustrations of the two main characters. An amusing, surreptitiously informative picture book.

From Québec, a charming book about soup and love. Two little gray critters sit down for a meal. The smaller one's soup is too hot, so while it cools the larger one is forced to field lots of questions. The bigger one, who wears glasses, patiently answers each question, whether it be about who made the soup, where lentils come from, or the origins of salt and pepper--and the questions keep coming! Each answer to the smaller critter's questions includes beautifully illustrated botanical and cooking-science content--with funny answers thrown in to amuse adults and children alike. Is it possible that the lentils in your soup are in fact buttons pulled off the backs of cheerful toads? The smaller critter is steered to the correct answer each time, but we all get to have fun along the way. Charming, colorful drawings feature graceful color and delicate linework as well as surprisingly detailed scientific illustrations--and there's something for everyone hidden in the sweet, whimsical details. The pages are dotted with peeping tomatoes, cuddly peas in a pod, happy sheep, and even a worried jellyfish, to name a few. The characters' back-and-forth dialogue ping-pongs playfully in speech bubbles. Funny dialogue keeps the pages turning. It even concludes with a kid-friendly recipe to make your own bowl of lentil soup! Who knew there was so much fun, and so much to learn, in a bowl of lentil soup? (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.