Nope. Never. Not For Me!

PreS-Gr 1–A young dinosaur-obsessed toddler does not want to eat broccoli. Her refrain of “Nope. Never. Not for Me” repeats even as her mother invites her to get acquainted with the veg by looking at it and touching it. When her mother uses her love of dinosaurs to turn eating the broccoli into a game, she is able to sniff it, touch it, and even taste a little bite. She hates it! Her mother reassures her that it is OK if she didn’t like it—the important thing is that she tried something new. The young child is now a “Try”ceratops and has decided she can try more new foods. A dinosaur chart with an empty belly allows the child to place pictures of new foods she has tried on it along with smiley or frowny face stickers to show what she thought of each one. The story is a brief, but important one. The child is able to have a positive experience exploring something new by using something she is already deeply invested in. Illustrations are ink and pencil on watercolor paper and are mainly green, black, and orange—it is, after all, a story with broccoli and dinosaurs.