mushrooms!

After our walk through the woods the other weekend, I began searching in earnest for a preschool/early school age book on mushrooms. I didn't have much luck at my local library, but I did find Good Mushrooms and Bad Toadstools used on Amazon for $1 plus shipping. We're already enjoying flipping through the pictures and simple text.

This book depicts everything from colorful, unique mushrooms, to ordinary forest and field mushrooms.

A few photographs even show the various parts of the mushroom including the root system, the gills, the stems, and of course, the beautiful caps!

Here the field mushrooms are shown, but you can also see farmed mushrooms, morels and underground truffles. I'd love to meet the person who originally thought truffles might taste nice. They look almost like clumps of mud or *ahem* animal droppings.

Although I definitely don't want my kids to immediately head out to picking backyard mushrooms to eat, I think the ending is a bit flimsy by saying that you should only pick mushrooms out of the grocery store or off your pizza. I might have ended a little cleaner by recommending to only pick eating mushrooms when with a knowledgeable mushroom-picker. :)

Either way, the rest of the book makes up for the ending, and I'm definitely glad we added this little gem to our collection. We plan to take it with us on our next walk through the woods!