Kalee Gwarjanski of Gray has spent much of this spring visiting Maine schools and libraries to help local kids celebrate something unexpected: vegetables.
The veggie-based story times and crafts accompany her first book, “Miss MacDonald Has a Farm,” released this spring by Doubleday, Random House Children’s Books. It was inspired by a family visit to pick up vegetables from a farm six years ago with Gwarjanski’s four young children.
Formal nutrition lessons reach Maine children from federal and state food benefit programs, the state department of education and local nonprofits. “Miss MacDonald Has a Farm” brings some of it home, and according to Gwarjanski, kids love learning about vegetables. Parents email her regularly to say they read the book as a family every night and their kids sing the modified song, “E-I-E-I grow.”
Gwarjanski said in her experience most kids enjoy vegetables if they’re presented as just a part of a meal.
In her educational visits, she’s found children excited to tell her about the vegetables they grow with their families and their favorite ones to eat.
The male lead character of the familiar “Old MacDonald” song is the opposite of Gwarjanski’s experience visiting farms. Because more women are farming, the female Miss MacDonald reflects what many Maine farms look like today, she said. In 2024, 43 percent of Maine farmers were women compared to 36 percent nationwide.
The book moves through the growing season in order, and includes the chores required. At the end, Miss MacDonald enjoys a feast of her crops. Gwarjanski also details what part of the plant each vegetable is — broccoli is a flower, celery is a stalk, lettuce is a leaf.
It’s important to her that kids develop an idea that not all foods are ready at the same time or available all year in Maine, and that producing it takes a lot of work. Not every kid gets to experience life on a farm, and she hopes the book will help make up for some of the knowledge they don’t have.
”Somebody, somewhere, has taken a lot of care to produce this tomato,” she said. “It doesn’t just appear.”
Gwarjanski didn’t grow up around farming, and doesn’t consider herself much of a gardener. But as a homeschooling mother, she enjoys cooking for her family, and educating other children about vegetables is fulfilling for her.
Understanding and appreciating vegetables also makes them a regular part of life.
“Food is such a big part of our being,” she said. “We all eat vegetables, whether we admit it or not. Sometimes it gets lost in translation when you’re not living in a rural area.”
