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A World of Food: Discover Magical Lands Made of Things You Can Eat! by Carl Warner doesn’t actually come out in the UK until May, but given that we’ve been playing a lot with our food recently, I couldn’t resist sharing this title with you now.

A World of Food showcases the incredible landscapes created out of food by photographer Carl Warner. 12 scenes are included, accompanied by a rhyming text describing some of what you can see in each image.

The photographs are incredible – witty, inventive, mindboggling. It’s enormous fun to attempt to work out what everything is made of; sand dunes from couscous, autumn leaves from cornflakes, railway tracks from kitkats, for example. At the back of the book there’s a key to each picture so you can check your guesses.

We found looking at the images inspiring and eyeopening. All of us wanted to try our hand at creating similar images, and the photos also made us look anew at food items we might have previously considered rather dull eg split peas, kale and sunflower seeds.

Unfortunately, the accompanying text doesn’t match the quality and inventiveness of the photos. The rhymes are a somewhat clunky e.g

If all the world were gray,
There wouldn’t be much room-
For every inch of ground would sprout
A tasty gray mushroom

or

Like herbivores on forest floor,
We’d walk through fresh green herbs
And share out thyme with passersby
In leafy, lush suburbs.

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh, as this book is really a showcase for Carl Warner‘s imaginative photography, which you can also see on his website. Indeed many of the images included in the book are (currently) available to view somewhere online which leaves me wondering who might buy this book?

I think it would be great for schools doing a healthy food topic. The images are such fun; they are bound to get kids looking at fruit and veg in a different light. I think families with picky eaters (just like our family) might enjoy this book. With my picky eaters half the battle is getting the kids just to touch the food; by offering them the chance to make pictures with their food at least this first hurdle become easier to jump over. I, personally, would love it if posters were available of these photos; they would look super in cafes, school canteens and even in my kitchen!

And so my picky eaters did