Comments: Julia's Kitchen Wisdom is the next best thing to having a mom (or dad) who can really cook on call to answer every cooking question – which is to say, it's the best thing for most of us. It is essentially Julia Child's notebook from 50 years' of cooking.

It has been released in paperback to roughly coincide with the launch of the film Julie & Julia, based on Julie Powell's book of the same name and Childs's My Life in France.

Not everyone makes Fillets of Sole Meunière or Crêpes Suzette these days, but nearly everyone needs to know how to prep and cook vegetables and how to roast a chicken or leg of lamb. This modest book covers that and a lot more – including soups and sauces; salads and dressings; vegetables; meats, poultry, and fish; eggs, breads, crêpes and tarts; cakes and cookies; as well as sections on essential equipment and culinary definitions (especially French).

Because it involves a certain amount of shorthand, we debated whether this would really be useful for novice cooks, but there's so much useful information, we've decided to recommend it to everyone. Novices will just grow into it. Is that such a bad thing?