Book Spotlight: Yes, Chef! by Charlotte Love

by Taryn Alper, MA, CCC-SLP/TSSLD

I’ve been following Charlotte Love and her anthropomorphized art for some time now on Instagram. I was delighted to learn she put out a children’s book. And who can’t help but say the book’s title as if you were watching “The Bear”?

I purchased Yes, Chef! (Grosset & Dunlap/Penguin Random House) from First Book Marketplace ($25 off your first order with my referral link). First Book is a non-profit that sells discounted books and educational resources to professionals who work in Title 1 schools. You can also find Yes, Chef! on Amazon (affiliate link) and at Barnes & Noble.

Yes, Chef! is an interactive book where the kitchen items and ingredients used to make a fruit salad talk to the reader. The text directives are simple and the illustrations are engaging, perfect for allowing the reader to stop and comment on what’s happening on the page. How engaging? Every item has eyes looking right at you! You’re even invited to join the kitchen items and ingredients when on the first page you read, “Team, are we ready?”

Take the opportunity to expand on identifying the fruit by more than its name. They all have different colors, parts, and sizes. Some need to be opened with certain tools before eating. Some need to be cut or peeled in a specific way before eating. Some you can pop in your mouth right after washing. 

The vocabulary in this book could be your child’s first exposure to certain ingredients and kitchen items (e.g., melon scoop), so don’t expect them to identify an item like that right away without prior knowledge.

There’s a page where all the fruits are stacked on top of each other. You can ask which fruit is the biggest or smallest. You can ask a child to identify fruit based on its position. You can ask your child which food would be softer or harder to chew.

This is also a fantastic book to teach early inferencing and predicting skills. There’s a page where the fruit is peeled, chopped, or scooped out. You can ask your child which fruit was peeled, chopped, or scooped. How did you know it was peeled, chopped, or scooped? There’s a page where the fruit’s been cleaned in a strainer and you see water droplets on the page. You can explain why strainers have holes for washing fruit.

Once you’ve either read the book or made the fruit salad the same way as in the book, you can ask your child to either recall the steps by looking at the book or without looking at the book. How would you make your fruit salad differently? Would you add or remove anything? Would you add a different topping like granola or coconut flakes?

Yes, Chef! can target a variety of language and feeding goals, so let’s eat!