There's No Such Thing as Vegetables

Cover of picture book with illustration of a Japanese American boy sitting dumbfounded on the grass in a garden, surrounded by "vegetables"

“Lukoff isn’t attempting to break down taxonomies but is instead making a larger point about the sometimes arbitrary ways in which humans label our world. Larger points about semantic satiation and social constructs may be lost on the elementary school crowd, but a story about plants arguing their way out of a salad bowl is funny no matter how you slice it. It helps enormously that the art is by Tsurumi, a master of hilarious visual gags and irate tomatoes, who brings to life in a cartoon-based format the gently defiant edibles. Subversion in the salad! Destabilization with dressing! Social constructs fall by the wayside in this clever review.”—Kirkus Reviews

“…colorful garden personalities are bound to tickle readers. So too will the idea that basic concepts can prove more social construct than fact—or, as an ear of corn explains by way of analogy, “Don’t think too hard about language and how every word you say is just a collection of random sounds.”—Publishers Weekly

“I am all in for this. Anyone who thinks that teaching about LGBTQ or other social justice topics requires a serious approach could learn a lot from this book. Lukoff isn’t hitting readers over the head with an explicit connection to gender or race or any social concept, but he is helping them to think critically about the world around them, sowing seeds for future harvests. It’s an approach that should lead to strong roots.”—Mombian

“A boy sets out for vegetables and gets an earful from a garden of anthropomorphic edible plants in funny, informational picture book There's No Such Thing as Vegetables”—Shelf Awareness