Cookies: Bite-Sized Life Lessons
By Amy Krouse Rosenthal
HarperCollins, $12.99
40 pages, ISBN 006058081X

Reviewed by Amy Brozio-Andrews

It's easy to teach children concrete things like the alphabet, colors, and shapes; they have clearly visible boundaries and characteristics, they can be drawn, touched, photographed, and passed back and forth between parent and child.

Things get a bit murkier though, when it comes to teaching children about nebulous things like etiquette: loyalty, contentment, patience, and cooperation are subjects that are less easily defined but no less important to living a happy and successful life. But Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Cookies: Bite-Sized Life Lessons adds solid form and weight to these ephemeral ideas and other similar concepts in such a way that both kids and their parents will appreciate.

From baking cookies to sharing and eating them, Rosenthal's not-quite-a-story explains the basics of courteous conduct and behavior in an impartial, gentle fashion. Never syrupy or condescending, the language she uses is easy and familiar.

Each concept is defined and coupled with an appropriate illustration. For example, "Cooperate means, 'How about you add the chips while I stir?'" Similarly articulated ideas follow along as the cookies are baked, offered around, dropped, shared, and eaten, demonstrating compassion, optimism, pessimism, trustworthiness, honesty, open-mindedness, and wisdom. Including the everyday language that goes along with each idea in the text, Rosenthal effectively conveys her definition of each and provides kids with the tools they need to put these lessons to use in their day-to-day lives, when they need to draw on their own strength to face up to things, like honesty (i.e., confessing that I'm actually the one that took the cookie) and courage (i.e., it was hard to admit I took the cookie, but I did it).

Like her previous children's books, Little Pea and One of Those Days, Rosenthal again brings her distinctive style to young readers. And like her autobiography Encyclopedia of An Ordinary Life, she demonstrates her skill at softening the serious with a gentle touch.

There's a common phrase in writing: show, don't tell. Rosenthal makes this work for her book Cookies, too. She shows kids how to behave with courtesy and politeness, rather than just telling them "do this" or "don't do that." Her tone and voice is warm and soothing; even when she's writing about unpleasant qualities like greed and envy, Rosenthal refrains from being harsh or brash. Cookies helps reinforce points you're probably already making as a parent while entertaining your child at the same time.

Jane Dyer's colorful, vintage-inspired art beautifully accompanies Rosenthal's text. A well-known illustrator whose previous work includes the Little Brown Bear series, Dyer's muted color palette effectively mirrors Rosenthal's gentle, measured tone and pace. Apple-cheeked children and their well-dressed animal friends display the kind of conduct we all hope for from our children, treating others as we'd like to see them treated.

Cookies: Bite-Sized Life Lessons is a relaxing book, one that can be shared and talked about leisurely, providing food for thought and nourishment for families' souls.