Sun in My Tummy: How the food we eat gives us energy from the sun

The cooking of a healthy breakfast moves from parent-child bonding to an eloquent conversation about energy, the growth of plants, and the miraculous ways the sun’s light nourishes us all.

It began with the sun,
Who showers the earth
With heat and light—
Tiny packets of energy.

How does a home-cooked breakfast give a little girl the energy she needs for a brand-new day? In gently expressive language, her mother takes readers on a journey into the earth where sleepy seeds are tickled awake and grow into golden oats; into blueberry patches, where green leaves break apart water and air to build sweet sugar; and into a pasture where sun becomes grass, becomes cow, becomes milk.

Author Laura Alary’s free verse breaks big ideas into child-sized pieces, making Sun in My Tummy an accessible introduction to the concepts of matter and energy, and how the sun’s light becomes fuel for our bodies through the food we eat. Andrea Blinick’s mixed-media illustrations pair the cozy and homelike with the glowing and dramatic as she takes readers from the kitchen to the farm field and to the sky and back. A concluding Author’s Note shares further information about photosynthesis for young readers.

“This book is as essential as sunshine; the absolutely beautiful STEM story is as absorbing as photosynthesis itself.” —School Library Journal★ Starred Review

“Toronto author Laura Alary’s poetic rumination about how the sun nourishes us all offers food for thought. The sunny and bright mixed-media illustrations from Andrea Blinick are inviting.”—Quill & Quire★ Starred Review

AWARDS

  2022 2022 The Children’s Book Council “March: Hot Off the Press” feature

  2023 2023-2024 Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award