Feeding Tiny Bellies is a well organized and graphically appealing tutorial guide with recipes on planning, choosing, and packing perfect school lunches by Lily Payen. Due out 28th July 2026 from Penguin Random House on their DK imprint, it's 256 pages and will be available in flexibound and ebook formats.
The author has a warmly encouraging writing style and the tips she gives are usable, practical, safety conscious, and appealing. She has developed a solid system of mix-and-match menus with lots of options for protein, carbs, fruit, and veggies. There are a lot of great tips in the introduction about selecting safe and appropriate containers, drink flasks, bags, and more. She's very very inspirational and so organized. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, readers have a clear plan set out where they can choose one option from each list and get an almost endless variety of choices.
She includes practical tips about variety (whilst honoring the fact that most kids want their favorites on repeat, until they -don't-), food safety, accessories like fruit and vegetable cutters to make fun shapes, and getting your kids involved in planning and helping making their lunches to help with mastering tasks and independence. She's included numerous sample lunch plans which can be mix-and-matched. All of the tasks also include the rationale and explanations for what purpose they fulfill. It's crystal clear she's an educator at heart (and a very good one, if this book is any indication).
She even includes a pretty comprehensive overview over cleaning, food safety, and navigating food allergies and sensitivities.
The following chapters include the varied recipes, grouped thematically: brunch boxes, DIY lunch kits, beyond the PB&J, from dinner to thermos, copycat snacks & treats (including goldfish copycats!), and after-school snacks. Recipes are written with a title/description (including labels for gluten free, dairy free, nut free, and vegetarian (may contain eggs)), followed by a bullet list of ingredients and step-by-step prep directions. Ingredient measurements are given in imperial (American) and metric (yay!). Most ingredients will be readily available at any well stocked grocery store in North America.
The book is beautifully photographed throughout and the food styling is attractive and realistic. The author and her beautiful family also appear frequently, a homey touch.
Five stars. This is a wonderful resource and usable - full of good tips and recipes. It would be an excellent choice for public or home library as well as gift giving.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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