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WELCOME TO THE GREEN HOUSE by Jane Yolen

WELCOME TO THE GREEN HOUSE

by Jane Yolen & illustrated by Laura Regan

Pub Date: April 21st, 1993
ISBN: 0-399-22335-5
Publisher: Putnam

Taking as her text a sentence from Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle—"The land is one great wild, untidy luxuriant hothouse, made by nature for herself"—Yolen lyrically compares a house to the rain forest ("...no roof in the green house,/only the canopy of leaves") and notes its animals ("the quick-fingered capuchin/make their slow-quick ways/from room to room...a splash of golden toad,/a lunge of waking lizards,/a plunge of silver fish") and their sounds. Regan makes an outstanding picture-book debut with lush full-bleed spreads rendered in gouache, with luminously diffuse light, exquisitely detailed wildlife, and decorative forms—close to the picture plane—that recall Leonard Weisgard's art. Unlike the plethora of contrived or sentimental books on the subject, this one is simplicity itself—eloquent and effective. (Picture book. 4-9)