Gentle encouragement for the youngest of gardeners.
Berries, apples, and pears, yum!
With the help of the child narrator, the aptly named Granny Root grows berry bushes and fruit trees, harvests when it’s time, and then eats or preserves the bounty. This entry in the author’s four-book Follow My Food series provides a step-by-step account of fruit growing with simple words and colorful, stylized pictures. Granny and the youngster prepare the soil, plant berry bushes and seedlings, prune, and weed. Putting nets over the strawberry plants keeps birds away. In summer, Granny waters, and the two watch and wait until the fruit is ripe. The end of summer means it’s time for apples and pears; they bite into the fruit, bake some of it into pies, and preserve the rest as jam. This concise U.K. import will satisfy young listeners or early readers curious about where their food comes from; it’s also a lovely example of intergenerational bonding. Backmatter includes a matching activity, further information (with a reminder that eating local fruit in season is better for the planet), and a page that lists four kinds of fruit (“berries,” “stone fruit,” “pome fruit,” and “dry fruit”), with examples. Finally, the book has a recipe for fruit salad—enough for the whole family. Granny and the child are brown-skinned.
Gentle encouragement for the youngest of gardeners. (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781662670701
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer.
Rotner follows up her celebrations of spring and autumn with this look at all things winter.
Beginning with the signs that winter is coming—bare trees, shorter days, colder temperatures—Rotner eases readers into the season. People light fires and sing songs on the solstice, trees and plants stop growing, and shadows grow long. Ice starts to form on bodies of water and windows. When the snow flies, the fun begins—bundle up and then build forts, make snowballs and snowmen (with eyebrows!), sled, ski (nordic is pictured), skate, snowshoe, snowboard, drink hot chocolate. Animals adapt to the cold as well. “Birds grow more feathers” (there’s nothing about fluffing and air insulation) and mammals, more hair. They have to search for food, and Rotner discusses how many make or find shelter, slow down, hibernate, or go underground or underwater to stay warm. One page talks about celebrating holidays with lights and decorations. The photos show a lit menorah, an outdoor deciduous tree covered in huge Christmas bulbs, a girl next to a Chinese dragon head, a boy with lit luminarias, and some fireworks. The final spread shows signs of the season’s shift to spring. Rotner’s photos, as always, are a big draw. The children are a marvelous mix of cultures and races, and all show their clear delight with winter.
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3976-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Enticing and eco-friendly.
Why and how to make a rain garden.
Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.
Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781324052357
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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