An interestingly presented and well-written story of gardening for the young ones, but it’s brought low by its...
Scarlet runner beans planted by a little girl grow in their natural cycle in this picture book.
Unspooling in a modified cumulative rhyme structure—“Green bean. / And freckles and speckles. / Freckles and speckles. / Soon a root and a shoot. // A root and a shoot. / And a sprout peaking (sic) out”—Thomas’ spare words, in both their narrative structure and their story, convey nature’s cycle. An unnamed young white girl, accompanied by her springer spaniel, plants a circle of scarlet runner beans and tends them, hoeing, staking, and protecting them from rabbits and insects. In high summer the beans have formed a teepeelike structure—a perfect enclosure, the girl finds, for summer reading. The natural cycle continues as winter comes and goes, and one dried bean that has fallen off sprouts again in spring. The tale is charming, and the method of delivery works quite well (unfortunate typo aside). What doesn’t work so well are the amateurish illustrations. Where the story is spare and lilting, they are ponderous—not a good match. Additionally, the girl portrayed often looks clunky due to poor representation of perspective, and she appears to be a much older girl by the story’s conclusion. Four pages of additional information at the end of the book include plant life cycles, words to know for children, and activities teachers and parents can initiate.
An interestingly presented and well-written story of gardening for the young ones, but it’s brought low by its illustrations. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58469-543-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dawn Publications
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful.
Life buzzes in a community garden.
Surrounded by apartment buildings, this city garden gets plenty of human attention, but the book’s stars are the plants and insects. The opening spread shows a black child in a striped shirt sitting in a top-story window; the nearby trees and garden below reveal the beginnings of greenery that signal springtime. From that high-up view, the garden looks quiet—but it’s not. “Sleepy slugs / and garden snails / leave behind their silver trails. / Frantic teams of busy ants / scramble up the stems of plants”; and “In the earth / a single seed / sits beside a millipede. / Worms and termites / dig and toil / moving through the garden soil.” Sicuro zooms in too, showing a robin taller than a half-page; later, close-ups foreground flowers, leaves, and bugs while people (children and adults, a multiracial group) are crucial but secondary, sometimes visible only as feet. Watercolor illustrations with ink and charcoal highlights create a soft, warm, horticulturally damp environment. Scale and perspective are more stylized than literal. McCanna’s superb scansion never misses, incorporating lists of insects and plants (“Lacewings, gnats, / mosquitos, spiders, / dragonflies, and water striders / live among the cattail reeds, / lily pads, and waterweeds”) with description (“Sunlight warms the morning air. / Dewdrops shimmer / here and there”). Readers see more than gardeners do, such as rabbits stealing carrots and lettuce from garden boxes.
Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1797-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
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