Seeds to Bread

Seeds to Bread is part of the “Where Food Comes From” series. The series follows the standard nonfiction format, including a table of contents, glossary, and index. Many large, colourful photos and illustrations support simple, large-sized text.

Seeds to Bread follows the path that wheat takes to change from seeds planted by farmers to loaves of bread, bagels, buns, naan, and baguettes. Chapters include “What is Wheat?”, “Growing Wheat”, “Harvesting Wheat”, “Wheat Becomes Flour”, “Flour Becomes Bread”, and “Healthy Bread”. The text is simple but includes appropriate vocabulary to explain some important concepts.

Wonder Word: Fiber
Fiber helps your body to digest food. Whole-wheat bread contains more fiber, vitamins, and minerals than white bread.

The photo of food groups laid out in a pie chart on the last page is eye-catching, and it includes the information:

For a healthy and balanced diet, eat more foods from the larger groups and less foods from the smaller groups.

Unfortunately, one of the smaller groups includes candy, potato chips, and chocolate. I’m not sure why these are included in “a healthy and balanced diet”.

My other concern about Seeds to Bread is that only one woman appears in the photos. People are not the main focus of the pictures in this book, but it would have been nice to see a female agricultural worker instead of a female appearing only once, and as a baker.

Seeds to Bread is very attractively laid out with age-appropriate information about the process of growing wheat and turning it into bread. This simple presentation will help young students connect more closely with where their food comes from – farm to table.