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HELLO, DANDELIONS! by Barbara Williams

HELLO, DANDELIONS!

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Pub Date: April 26th, 1979
Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Here's a question I bet Mother can't answer: If dandelions are pesky weeds, how come the early settlers brought dandelion seeds all the way from Europe to plant here in America?"" It's also a question I bet the four-year-old in Williams' photos never asked. A better question might be why Williams chose to illustrate that one with a photo of a windmill. As the rest of the lesson continues in the same first-person voice, Williams has the little girl informing us of Europeans' uses of dandelions as food, instructing us on how to smell and see and play games with dandelions (first alone, then with a friend--hers, in the photo, is a stuffed toy animal), and warning us of people who ""don't know how the sun can break up into little pieces of happiness and sprinkle itself in a meadow."" There's a little more but it's no less cloyingly precious and artificial.