Veggie Power

Part information book, part art book, Veggie Power does to the mind and the eyes what spinach does to Popeye’s muscles. Author Annette Roeder opens with a scholarly but accessible double page investigation into what makes a vegetable a vegetable, and how botanists distinguish between vegetables and fruits. We then get double page features on familiar vegetables, from carrots to leeks to sweet potatoes, where a page of elegant text is matched with an extravagantly inventive full-page portrait by artist Olaf Hajek. The text explains where the vegetables were first cultivated and eaten, how they got their names and includes quirky facts. Did you know, for example, that in the Middle Ages people thought that eating aubergines would make you sad, or that the workers building the pyramids in Egypt were paid in onions and garlic, or that people used to eat asparagus with their fingers because the chemicals in it turned silver cutlery black? Memorable stuff, but nothing compared to the dazzling impact of Hajek’s illustrations. His stunning, folk-art inspired work turns painting vegetables into an adventure. Acrobats and jugglers gambol around giant spinach leaves; a man with an enormous spoon skips up a ladder to a bowl of broccoli balanced on a beautiful lady’s head, while a strongman brandishes a fork; beetroot grows between the elongated legs of a horse while a woman gathers corn accompanied by a handsome cockerel. If it sounds nonsensical or surreal, in fact the opposite is true and each page is the perfect representation of the vegetable. Visits to the supermarket vegetable aisles will ever be the same again! A unique and intriguing book and wonderful for sharing.