For Your Foodie

Eat Together
Written & Illustrated by Miguel Ordóñez
Age Level: 0-3 Years
Published November 8, 2022

This one made me hungry.

Kids won’t just be having fun and working up an appetite while reading this interactive board book, they’ll also be learning. The format of the book is simple. A spread shows the decomposed elements of an object (a stem, some leaves, and a red upside-down triangle) and asks readers to guess the whole, which is presented on the next page (a strawberry). The shapes are rendered in an abstract form, which creates the perfect amount of challenge.

“Time to eat!
3 shapes get together to make . . .
A strawberry!”

Through this super fun, food-themed guessing game, kids are tapping into a key cognitive skill known as visual closure. Visual closure is the ability to recognize a form or object when part of the picture is missing. This skill is critical to reading because it’s the visual processing tool that enables kids to quickly decode words and comprehend their meaning, essentially creating sight words.

There’s a cute narrative arc to the book involving industrious ants who are carrying all the yummy food away to their colony for a delicious feast. The yummy food, bright colors, and endearing bugs will remind you of another board book that’s dear to your heart: Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But Eat Together is unmistakably original, maintaining itself as firmly reminiscent rather than derivative of Carle’s beloved classic. It’s not asking you to replace the caterpillar on your shelves, rather it wants to slide in alongside it.