Concept Books

Freymann, S., & Elffers, J. (1999). How Are You Peeling? Foods with Moods.  New York: Arthur A. Levine Books.

ISBN- 0-439-10431-9

      This book explores the gamut of feelings and moods one might experience at different times using the natural expressive qualities of fruits and vegetables.  Carefully selecting produce for interesting folds and bumps, then craftily carving out mouths and eyes to create features, you can tell the creators of this book had lots of fun making it!
      It is great for the age range of 3-5 years because it poses simple questions and possible answers about feelings and emotions, and provides a unique way to show the facial/body expressions that accompany our moods.  It is an excellent way for a child to explore emotional expressions in a funny feel-good way, and makes the reader also know that it is okay to have many different emotions and expressions to go along with them.
      The artistic creation of this book is brilliant!  Who knew how much expression fruits and vegetables have.  It is a simple and extremely effective way to portray feelings.

Provocation:

• Find three fruits and/or vegetables that have some kind of interesting expression.  Set them up as a display on a table, leave them as is on the first day.  The next day add eyes... the day after that a mouth...  See if the children can guess what mood each fruit/veg might be in.  
• Ask the children about moods, how are they feeling?  What kind of face would you make if you felt angry, sad, tired, silly?

Presenting the book:

• Colour photocopy some of the images from the book, laminate them and glue sandpaper or felt to the back so that you can use a felt board while reading the book.  
• Choose 2-3 pages to stop and wonder at.  For example, one page asks "When you are angry do you pout? Whine? Cry? Scream? Shout?"  You can ask the children to show a face they make when they are angry, or when they pout, how do they whine? etc.
• Use a hand puppet that has a flexible face to help tell the story.  Make a bunch of faces with the puppet as it reads the story.

Extensions:

• Make fruit faces!  Using whole oranges or apples, dried black-eyed peas (eyes), and non-toxic markers (mouth) each child can make an expressive face for their fruit.  Take notice of how the authors/creators usually used the stem for the nose.
• Have a detailed discussion about the feelings talked about in the book and ask the children how different types of things, activities, or situations make them feel... silly, loved, angry, confused, surprised, etc.
• Using the beautiful photographs as inspiration, get the children to make drawings of the fruits and vegetables and the great expressions they have.  Make photocopies of different pages so that each child can look at the faces to draw them.