I’ve had my eye on this book for quite some time and I finally found it at the library this week. Emma is getting to the stage where she’s starting to notice differences in peoples’ diets. For example, we went out for ice cream (and she is allowed to choose whatever flavor she wants, regardless of what it’s made from), and she asked me if I was going to have some too. The place we were going didn’t always have a non-dairy option (they do now, thanks to me!), so I had to explain the difference between her ice cream and my ice cream. (I do want to say that when there is a non-dairy option in the flavor she wants– chocolate– I will order that for her instead of the dairy-based ice cream). Anyway, this whole milk discussion led to an egg discussion and her proclamation: “I don’t eat eggs because I’m not a chicken.” I never told her she couldn’t have eggs; this was her decision based on her knowledge of where the egg comes from. I hope that as she gets older she’ll think the same way about milk and choose a vegan diet.

That’s why I thought this book, That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals: A Book About Vegans, Vegetarians, and All Living Things, would be a good thing to read to her. She already knows that we don’t eat chickens and cows and pigs because it’s “not nice,” but I thought this book would explain the concept better than I can. It’s hard to know what a 3-year-old will understand and what may or may not be appropriate.

I read through this book once before attempting to read it to her, and I thought it would be more appropriate for kids 5 and older. We didn’t even get through one page before she lost interest, so I stick by my initial feeling that it’s most appropriate for 5+. It’s a simplified version of what happens to the animals on factory farms (and they are called factory farms in the book– I think to make the distinction between what a kid thinks of as a “farm” and what a farm that raises animals for food is really like). It also talks about how fishing boats are ruining the ocean by catching dolphins, sea turtles, etc– but in terms that a kid could understand. It also talks a bit about climate change, rainforest destruction, world hunger and how animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to all these things.

The Verdict: I really do like this book and will add it to my home library at some point. It will be an important tool in the future for educating Emma about our diet, how it’s different from everyone else’s diet that we know, and why we choose to eat the way that we do.