D.W. the Picky Eater

                                                                                   

                                                                        D.W. the Picky Eater

                                                           Marc Brown                                                        

 Grades: Late Second - Third

Do you know someone who you would consider a picky eater?  Maybe even as a kid you were one, and possibly even are still one.  Pick eaters only eat certain foods; food that they do not find appalling.  In the story, “D.W. the Picky Eater”, you will meet a girl who is the pickiest of pick eaters.

The story begins with a young girl named D.W. helping put the groceries away with her mother and brother.  While going through all of the bags, she does not find anything to be appetizing.  In fact, D.W. has a list, and a long one at that, of food that she does not eat; earning the title of picky eater by her brother, Authur.  D.W. will do anything so that she does not have to eat the food that does not satisfy her.  She lies, gives food to the dog, and even pushes the food around on her plate to look like she has taken some bites.  One night the family goes out to dinner and D.W. is disgusted with the spinach that she finds in her salad; resulting in her parents leaving her home whenever the family decides to go out for dinner.  D.W. sees a cool souvenir that Arthur got from last nights family dinner and decides that she will try to eat foods she has never has if they take her to dinner again.  At dinner, she orders Little Bo Peep Pot Pie and enjoys every last bite of the dish.  Everyone in the family is proud of D.W. for trying something new and that she actually liked the dish.  Wanting her mother to get the recipe, she asks the waiter what was in the pot pie, only to find out that there was a lot of spinach.

Even though this would be considered a fiction book because it is about aardvarks that live in a house and communicate with one another; there is a very good moral to the book that a lot of children and even adults can relate to.  The situation that occurs in the book is very much non-fiction because this occurs many times in a family environment.  It teaches students that if they try something that they are not used to, they may actually end up liking something they thought they never would like.  The pictures in this book are also very useful when trying to figure out the facial expressions and emotions that each character has.  You can see a very frustrated father and an embarrassed mother.  You can also see a very surprised and almost disturbed D.W. at the end of the book.

I would have this story in my classroom for the children to read during independent reading time or any other free time that they might endure during the day.  The book does a good job of describing characters, setting a solid plot, and using details even in the pictures for the students to learn from.  The illustrations could almost tell the story without the words because of how well the emotions are portrayed in each character.  I think that the students could learn a lot from this book or even relate to it on a personal level because the majority of young students are indeed picky eaters; or they at least know someone who acts just like D.W..