In the illustrations, there is steam rising from the Pumpkin soup. What is this? How does evaporation work? Helen Cooper creates a warm, inviting world in her “Pumpkin Soup.” It tells the story of three friends working through the challenges of friendship all while enjoying pumpkin soup. Look at the illustrations of Cat and Squirrel waiting on the steps. Could you draw a series of pictures like this to show some events that have taken place in a morning / afternoon? Throughout the story it contains repetitions which could allow children to join in whilst the story is being read to them. The use of capitals in the story allows the children to see which words are being shouted this will allow the children to start thinking of expression whilst they read stories.

The value of the book conveys different levels and dimensions in the illustrations. It goes a long with the books story line because they are looking for a lot of different vegetables and the illustrations capture the many levels of vegetation they are searching in. It is a very nice tale about accepting our own limitations, pushing them, helping each others, and friendship. And pumpkin soup, of course!! The line and shape about a book go hand in hand with the description of the objects drawn. As said before everything that is drawn in the book looks real life and you’d be able to find these objects in real life. Since the book is drawn softly, it goes a long with the books fun theme.The general messages portrayed in to book include promoting teamwork; working together for a positive end result and helping others.

The tale itself was a pretty good one, with everyone wanting to try each other's jobs and taking each other's skills for granted. On the whole, it's a fun story to read aloud and would be a good precursor to a discussion about fighting among friends, different skillsets and wanting to try different things. It has an easy recipe for pumpkin soup at the end of the story and our girls are excited to try it. I feel the moral of the story is to show children to not be afraid to try new things; it is OK to make mistakes and to not give up, be patient and to not judge a book by its cover. Retell the story to a friend. Can you use different voices and expressions? Listen to the audiobook version of the story. Look at the facial expressions of the characters in each illustration. How are they feeling? What might they be thinking? My personal opinion is that this is an excellent and enjoyable book for children in a year 3 or 4 class as it offers an exciting, interesting storyline, as well as areas for development and creativity.

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

The story got a bit scary at one point, even though the fear was limited to the imaginations of two of the friends.

The book Delicious by Helen Cooper is an adorable and interactive book that will be extremely fun if used with your own children or students at school. There are many features to this book that I took a liking to and gave a prestigious five star rating to. In this book review we will look at the elements of design in picture books and go in detail what made me favor this book so much.I feel this book would provide excellent opportunity for enhancing language skills, exploring food and animals as themes, and could be an excellent starting point for an interesting classroom display. Her books have been translated into 26 languages and won many awards including the Library Association Kate Greenaway Medal – twice. Everyone is happy when they have their own job to do. What jobs and routines do people do to keep everything organised? Do you have any classroom jobs? One of the illustrations shows the animals making their soup, as seen through the window. Can you draw a picture with a view through a window (looking into or out of a building)?

Pumpkin soup sounds so good, but Ill admit the only times I’ve eaten it are in restaurants, even though I have no doubt I have access to many recipes for it. Make a list of the different words that are used instead of ‘said’ in the story, e.g. murmured, snapped, squeaked, wailed.Space was definitely a huge part in this book; a lot of the illustrations were just the characters engaging in conversation with each other. In other illustrations they were shown in a huge field searching for different ingredients to put in their soup. Also, they detached the bugs from the story in many different places showing a side story that the bugs wanted to save the soup they were wasting. The story was written in third person describing all the events taking place. So the viewpoint was coming from a story teller. The language is expressive and descriptive, which sets the story in sentences which move at an exciting pace. ‘When no one was watching he peeled them, and sliced them, and chopped them, and diced them, and squished them and plopped them into the cooking pot’. added later] We made the pumpkin soup, and while our girls were pretty excited that we were making the recipe from the book (and they even got to add their own "pipkins" of salt), they weren't as enthusiastic about the taste. I thought it was lovely. Oh well...