There is a lot more here than "bash a chicken fillet, coat it, get someone to fry it, throw tomato sauce and cheese at it – voila, Italian chicken parmigiana (like no Italian has ever eaten it, mind)". This is much more scientific, careful and mature about everything. We start with kitchen basics – the dos and don'ts, where technique and safety are concerned – and even get to think about household budgeting and understanding nutrition labels, long before we see a recipe. The first one – cheesy quesadillas – I presume to be someone's favourite, but it's a fine entry to cooking, needing just four ingredients. Every recipe is on two pages – the first showing ingredients and a large-print sentence about what the dish is supposed to be, as witnessed in the main photo below. The second page has a highly pictorial step-by-step, so every technique and every stage is illustrated.

What this simple guide means is that by recipe three we're bundling six ingredients together – and that's just for the salad dressing. We're measuring well, we're learning our different herbs, and we're eating well. It's not all perfect – at least the picture of the farfalle pasta with basil, tomato and mozzarella looks really bland and dry – but things here will definitely give people a leg up where home ec is concerned. In fact a few recipes look less like dinner and more like a side dish, a valid component of a meal – and a lot of the ideas are vegetarian, so you're up to the popcorn chicken and ramen soup before you get a balanced course. The fried rice will never gain the attention of Uncle Roger, but generally anyone should be positive about how positive and sensible this book's contents are. I certainly am.

What a great little cookbook! On the recipe front, there are plenty of kid-tastebud-friendly options in here, and they all look to be the kid-appropriate in terms of complexity of execution. The recipes as written are well structured, clearly laying out what ingredients are needed for each part of the recipe, how those ingredients need to be prepped, and then the execution steps are nicely illustrated with pictures. I feel confident my 6th grader could pull these off on her own, and my 3rd grader could pull these off with some assistance. What I especially love is that beyond the recipes, this book includes some good Cooking 101 lessons, in addition to general Home Ec lessons that will serve kids well when they go off on their own and need to budget, plan, and shop for themselves as young adults. Highly recommend this book, and I suspect it will be one of my favorite gifts for tweens.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and Deanna Cook for the eARC in exchange for this honest review.