7 Delicious Books Starring Anthropomorphized Foods

Arnie the Doughnut, by Laurie Keller
Arnie the Doughnut suffers from a most disturbing existential crisis, as you might assume most anthropomorphized foods must. Is being eaten the only thing a donut’s (w)hole purpose? Is Arnie the only treat who questions this? Follow along on his journey of self-exploration from his naive bakery beginning to his arrival on Mr. Bing’s plate.

How Are You Peeling?, by Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers
Freymann and Elffers have created a delectable empire of anthropomorphized food books, all worth digging up; from the transportation-themed Fast Food to the sublime baby animals in Baby Food. How Are You Peeling? explores the spectrum of human emotion played out through exquisitely styled photography of exceptionally expressive produce.

Creepy Carrots, by Aaron Reynolds
Haven’t we all had that paranoid sensation that the one foodstuff we love most is following us everywhere we go? No? Just me? Oh. Well, even if you haven’t been stalked by celery or dogged by frankfurters, you can understand the terror that poor Jasper Rabbit experiences when he believes carrots are tailing him.

Bad Apple, A Tale of Friendship, by Edward Hemingway
At its core, this book is a lighthearted lesson in loyalty. Young apple Mac, our a-peeling protagonist, befriends a worm named Will, but the other apple kids don’t approve. It’s just not natural! But once he’s had Will under his skin, Mac finds he’s just not happy without him. Will Mac choose being a bad apple over being a sad one? You’ll just have to read this pip of a book and seed… er, see!

Little Sweet Potato, by Amy Beth Bloom
Displaced from his cozy garden home, Little Sweet Potato undertakes a quest for a new venue to put down roots, but this journey is fraught with bumps and lumps—his! The plucky tuber rolls along, searching for an accepting plot of land, only to find judgmental vegetation and shallow flora at every turn, all of them denying him entry into their fertile grounds based on his looks. Just when Little Sweet Potato thinks he’ll never find a home, a bumpalicious buddy catches his eye(s) and shows him a loving place where he can be proud of what he yam. 

Little Pea, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
In our world, we eat peas; in their world, peas eat candy. Little Pea must suffer through five pieces of candy before he can have dessert. In this case, dessert is spinach. Adorable, and profoundly disturbing if you think too much about it.

Vegetables in Underwear, by Jared Chapman
Arguably the most important book of 2015.