This meditation on biodiversity makes its point with grace.
At the edge of Stone Hollow, Ana grows a garden.
Unlike the wild, which edges her little plot, Ana’s garden is tidy, neat, and orderly. She uses only the best seeds, tossing the discards into the wild. After planting, Ana builds a stone boundary designed to shelter her garden from the chaos beyond. Before long, her garden begins to grow, sprouting into gorgeous tall flowers and delicious fruits and vegetables. Pollinators and people come to visit. But while her visitors love the garden, Ana is still critical. She pulls out unfamiliar plants that have taken root and sorts through her seeds again, throwing everything she rejects into the wild. Then she builds her stone boundary even higher. Throughout the growing season, Ana perfects her garden and builds her wall ever higher. But the neater she makes her garden, the fewer visitors she sees—and the more she wonders whether tidiness and order ought to be her goals. Eventually, she decides to find out what’s behind the wall. Her discovery astounds her. In this sweet, simple story about appreciating wildness in all its forms, the protagonist is pictured as a dark-skinned, black-haired girl with hearing aids. The language is clear and easy to read, and the vibrant illustrations drive the story just as much as the words. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
This meditation on biodiversity makes its point with grace. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913747-43-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lantana
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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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