THE BERRY BOOK

Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, elderberries, bunchberries, currants . . . yum. The indefatigable Gibbons (Behold . . . the Unicorns!, 2001, etc.) surveys these glowing gems of the plant world, carefully differentiating between the edible and the inedible, the wild and the cultivated. She takes strawberries in stages from flower to mature fruit, showing other berries on the bush, in the collection basket, and being eaten or used for decoration, then ends with simplified recipes and some additional facts. Her design is to treat one topic per page, using vignettes to feature the differences. So a page on harvesting cultivated berries includes a hand picking a strawberry, another holding a blueberry rake, a third features a giant blueberry-picking machine, and the fourth a hand-pushed cranberry picker. Very basic facts about several varieties help to fill the pages: “Cranberries grow in bogs. Cranberries are firm and red. A BOG is a wet area. Cranberry sauce is served with turkey.” With characteristic visual simplicity she depicts them in a rightfully luscious-looking array of shapes and colors too. Hardly a definitive overview, but certainly a beginning. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)