Title:  Bread Comes to Life: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat
Author:  George Levenson
Illustrator:  Shmuel Thaler
Publisher:  Tricycle Press
ISBN:  978-1-58246-114-4
Year: 2008 (paperback)
Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level:  1.9

Concepts:  natural resources

Review:  One of the first economics ideas to which children are exposed when they enter elementary school is that natural resources are products of nature that can be used to make goods and services. Bread Comes to Life is an ideal book for teaching such a lesson about natural resources.  Stunning close-up photographs show how wheat seeds turn into shoots of bright green grass, which then grow into blades of wheat.  Each head of wheat, when it is harvested, contains numerous wheat grains that need to be separated from the chaff and ground into flour.  Instructions for using the wheat to bake a delicious loaf of bread follow this clear narrative about where that wheat comes from. Discussing this exceptional book in the context of natural resources can help children to realize that economic forces are working all around them, even in the bread they eat.

Review by: Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children