A little girl thinks her mother's garden is the ugliest in the neighborhood until she discovers that flowers might look and smell pretty but Chinese vegetable soup smells best of all. Includes a recipe.

In this charming story about celebrating differences a Chinese-American girl wishes for a garden of bright flowers instead of one full of bumpy, ugly, vegetables. The neighbors' gardens look so much prettier and so much more inviting to the young gardener than the garden of "black-purple-green vines, fuzzy wrinkled leaves, prickly stems, and a few little yellow flowers" that she and her mother grow. Nevertheless, mother assures her that "these are better than flowers." Come harvest time, everyone agrees as those ugly Chinese vegetables become the tastiest, most aromatic soup they have ever known. As the neighborhood comes together to share flowers and ugly vegetable soup, the young gardener learns that regardless of appearances, everything has its own beauty and purpose. THE UGLY VEGETABLES springs forth with the bright and cheerful colors of blooming flowers and lumpy vegetables. Grace Lin's playful illustrations pour forth with abundant treasures. Complete with a guide to the Chinese pronunciation of the vegetables and the recipe for ugly vegetable soup! Try it . . . you'll love it, too!

When a science experiment goes terribly wrong, a group of mutant veggies threatens to take over the world! Luckily, Agent Spike of the Secret Service is on the case. With help from a few tomatoes, Spike tries to stop this produce posse and their leader, the Big Pumpkin.

A bunch of friendly vegetables wear colorful underwear of all varieties—big, small, clean, dirty, serious, and funny—demonstrating for young ones the silliness and necessity of this item of clothing. The unexpectedness of vegetables in their unmentionables is enough to draw giggles, but the pride with which the “big kid” attire is flaunted in front of the baby carrots in diapers will tickle readers of all ages. With rhyming text that begs to be chanted aloud and art that looks good enough to eat, this vibrant story will encourage preschoolers to celebrate having left those diapers behind!

Dangerous Vegetables

The ineffectual Ambassador is just one of the handicaps facing the Americans as Southeast Asia becomes increasingly involved with Communism.

Why don't we eat more octopus? What about gurnard and other ugly fish? Cheeks and feet are cheap and delicious, but people prefer fillet or chops. What about rabbits and squirrels? Where do all the giblets go? And what's wrong with ugly vegetables? This book is about ingredients that are neglected, overlooked, forgotten. They are all tasty, sustainable and cheap, and easy to cook when you know how. Ugly Food aims to change the way people think about them, and the way they think about eating them. The food industry, like the fashion industry, seems driven by the pursuit of impossible perfection: pre-packaged meats with nary a head or foot or set of giblets in sight; rows of blemish-free fruit and vegetables in supermarkets tasting of not-very- much; and a steady stream of cookbooks containing photo-shopped, super-saturated photos of beautiful dishes bathed in sunlight. In contrast, Horsey and Wharton take an unpretentious, practical approach. They reveal the tips and tricks you need to prepare these undervalued foods with ease. And, alongside recipes, they provide social histories of ingredients that are positively brimming over with fascinating facts, fictions, and, of course, flavors. Recipes include: Ox-Cheek Salad à la Hongroise Lao Chicken Feet Salad Maldivian Curried Octopus Spiced Squirrel Popcorn Deep-fried Rabbit Ears Sheep's Brain on Toast Char Siu Pigs' Cheeks