Mark Bittman has taught us how to cook everything — how to bake and grill, prepare fish and vegetarian meals and do it fast. This fall, he’s targeting a different kind of home chef — the little ones.

“How to Cook Everything Kids” is written for children aged 8-12 and is bursting with photos, graphics, advice and techniques to empower any mini-Julia Childs in your home.

“It required a different kind of thinking,” Bittman says. “This is a book that is built to please kids and we’re not kids.

“So we had to consult with kids. We had to try to think like kids and about kids.”

Bittman, who has evolved from recipe developer and culinary writer into one of the leading voices on food and health policies, offers his take on kid-friendly dishes like baked ziti, chicken nuggets and chicken with orange sauce, giving easy directions and variations, like pork chops with apples for the latter dish.

‘Fun visually’

It’s a useful resource for first-time cooks, explaining things like garbanzo beans are the same as chickpeas and offering helpful sections on spices and herbs, kitchen equipment, and how to prep everything from butternut squash to corn.

There are pictures of kids throughout the book.

“We wanted it to feel inviting and fun visually for the kids. I think keeping their interest and holding their attention was something that we really wanted to do,” says Jacqueline Quirk, an associate editor at Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Bittman says the hope is that “How to Cook Everything Kids” will teach children that cooking isn’t hard and they can produce things that taste good — lifelong paths toward better health and breaking the addiction to eating out.

“If you empower them to make it themselves, they’ll be more likely to enjoy it, even if it’s a strange vegetable or something like that,” says Quirk. “We wanted to inspire an adventurousness in kids.”

“There’s a lot of stuff in here that 4- and 5-year-olds might get a kick out of if they’re so inclined,” Bittman says. “The important thing is that parents set the example and that’s a more important thing than having kids do hands-on cooking.”

Color and sweetness but no mandolins

The book tries not to lean on kitchen machines — and urges kids to get a parent to help with things like blenders — and one utensil was banished completely: the mandolin.

Bittman has bent to his audience to make visually attractive dishes and cooks some ingredients, like sweet potatoes and carrots, for a long time so the natural sugars shine.

“There’s more color in here than we would normally pay attention to. And, quite frankly, there’s more sugar in here than we would normally pay attention to,” he says. “We are focusing on real foods and good foods, but we’re allowing for the fact that kids really do gravitate toward sweets and you have to accommodate that to some extent.”