Andy Warner's Oddball Histories: Spices and Spuds: How Plants Made Our World

by Andy Warner

New York Times bestselling author Andy Warner returns with a highly entertaining, informative graphic novel that traces our ever-evolving relationship with plants through time.

Did you know that plants helped shape our modern world?

It may sound ridiculous, but empires have risen and fallen because of stuff you’d find in your grocery store’s vegetable aisle. Through wars, famine, prosperity, and more, every aspect of our lives and livelihoods has something to do with plants!

Whether or not you notice them, plants are as central to our day-to-day lives as a bowl of rice or a plate of pasta, and they have shaped our history the same way a gardener trims a topiary.

Did you know that a pepper blockade led to the Age of Exploration? How about that huge wheat barges once kept Rome running with free bread? Or that whole wars were fought over tea? Get ready to follow corn’s weird journey from the floating fields of the Aztec emperors to the glossy shine on this book’s cover.

Andy Warner sifts through the roots and leaves of our long, complicated history with the earth's original green resources in this hilarious, fact-filled follow-up to Andy Warner's Oddball Histories: Pests and Pets.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Nonfiction, History, Childrens, Food

248 pages, Hardcover

Published November 5, 2024

About the author

Andy Warner creates nonfiction comics.

He is the author of Pets & Pests, This Land is My Land, Spring Rain, and the NY Times Best Selling Brief Histories of Everyday Objects. His books have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Korean, French and Spanish.

He is a contributing editor at The Nib and teaches cartooning at Stanford University and The Animation Workshop in Denmark.

His work has been published widely, including by Slate, American Public Media, Popular Science, KQED, IDEO.org, The Center for Constitutional Rights, UNHCR, UNRWA, UNICEF, Google X and Buzzfeed.

He was a recipient of the 2018 Berkeley Civic Arts Grant and the 2019 and 2021 Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park Artist-in-Residency.

He works in a garret room in South Berkeley and comes from the sea.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fantastically engaging history book. It was told in graphic novel form, and the pictures were so well done. It explored the history of various plants and the impact of their trade on the world as a whole. This is a topic I find especially interesting, having lived on multiple continents. I appreciated that it didn't shy away from more challenging situations (for example situations where enslaved people were instrumental on a crop's success), but would recommend reading it with children or being aware so important conversations can be had.

I really like how the book was laid out, with different chapters dedicated to different plants, for example a chapter on tulips, and a chapter on wheat. A lot of links between the chapters were made, making the book a cohesive read. I think this book would be a fantastic read for older children.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for the ARC.

[Jennifer Wardlaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andy Warner’s Oddball Histories returns with a look at the crops that made us. Spices and Spuds takes us on a deep-dive into the history of the world via the relationship between humans and their agricultural interactions.

Broken down into chapters based on highlighting each major player plant, this book can easily be broken up to focus on a particular subject (as the author points out in the introduction). However like the circle of life, there are several call backs between sections that make some knowledge of other chapters essentially in getting the whole picture. The illustrations, simple text and humor make the wealth of information in this text easily digestible for middle-grade readers.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

[Amanda Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andy Warner's Oddball Histories: Spices and Spuds is an engaging and accessible graphic novel tracing the history and importance of Wood, Wheat, Corn, Rice, Peppers, Sugar, Potatoes, Tea, Tulips, and Cotton. Warner does a fantastic job of hitting historical and cultural milestones for all of these stories, including the often complicated trade routes. Spices and Spuds is filled with lots of funny little anecdotes. I will be referring back to this in our homeschool history texts when my kids get a little older-Enjoyable read for all ages. Thank you Net Galley and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for the advance reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

[May-Ling · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty much this is a textbook with no holds barred for middle schoolers and i picked it up because my kid read it. it's not what i thought it would be! solid illustration and font treatments. it certainly simplifies a lot and so the way slavery and colonization is portrayed can be off-putting at times, but i'm also not the target demographic.

this graphic novel is organized into chapters about wood, wheat, corn, rice, peppers, sugar, potatoes, tea, tulips and cotton. i learned so much as an adult about these plants and especially appreciated the background on potatoes, tea, and tulips - they opened my mind and connected the dots historically in my brain.

[Raj Bowers-Racine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting fact:

The iconic Kente cloth was created after Assante weavers learned to painstakingly take apart and reweave threads of imported cloth. The cloth came in solid colors from India. It was traded by the Portuguese for enslaved peoples that the Kente-clad Assante chiefs would steal from their neighbors.

[Kat Fio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know this is for like middle schoolers but I loved this

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more in depth and rather draining to read than I had expected.

[_lucy grace_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

cool

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much! I just don't think most kids would understand everything. Not enough context and no glossary.

[Bekah Hubstenberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A humorous, middle-grade, non-fiction graphic novel that explores the history of the world through natural resources. While mostly light hearted, the author uses this kid friendly vehicle to introduce bigger concepts and weave history together in a way that is not often presented to kids.

Similarly to Pollan’s Botany of Desire, a book that the author references in the bibliography, the narrative is organized by earth byproduct: wood, wheat, corn, rice, peppers, sugar, potatoes, tea, tulips and cotton.

My favorite part of the book is that because it was not organized chronologically, at points the author tells you to flip back to a specific page that talks about something different in the same time period so the reader is guided through contextualizing.