Not to downplay the cultural importance of The Very Hungry Caterpillar – but can I suggest another one of Eric Carle's books? It's called "Pancakes, Pancakes!"

Not to downplay the cultural importance of The Very Hungry Caterpillar – but can I suggest another one of Eric Carle's books? It's called "Pancakes, Pancakes!" In it, the protagonist wants to eat some pancakes – but he discovers that in order to do so, he needs to harvest and mill some wheat, milk a cow and churn some butter, and so forth. I read this to my kids when they were little, and it struck me as actually a pretty good lesson about how much work goes on outside of our house, in order to make Saturday Pancakes possible. But it's not presented in a preachy way at all – more of an excited way, like "isn't it interesting how much background work goes into Saturday Pancakes?". I credit that book with getting my kids interested in food/cooking and much more than that as well – the seed of thinking about what has to happen for an Amazon box to show up at your door with a particular gizmo. So I'll pour out some pancake batter for Eric Carle on Saturday morning.