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
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
Animated and educational.
A hare and a ground squirrel banter about the differences between related animals that are often confused for one another.
Jack is “no Flopsy, Mopsy, or Cottontail,” but a “H-A-R-E, hare!” Like sheep and goats, or turtles and tortoises, rabbits and hares may look similar, but hares are bigger, their fur changes color in the winter, and they are born with their eyes wide open. As the ground squirrel (not to be mistaken for a chipmunk (even though Jack cheekily calls it “Chippie”) and Jack engage in playful discussion about animals, a sneaky coyote prowls after them through the Sonoran Desert. This picture book conveys the full narrative in spirited, speech-bubbled dialogue set on expressive illustrations of talking animals. Dark outlines around the characters make their shapes pop against the softly blended colors of the desert backgrounds. Snappy back-and-forth paired with repetition and occasional rhyme enhances the story’s appeal as a read-aloud. As the story progresses, the colors of the sky shift from dawn to dusk, providing subtle, visual bookends for the narrative. One page of backmatter offers a quick guide to eight easily confused pairs, and a second turns a subsequent exploration of the book into a seek-and-find of 15 creatures (and one dessert) hidden in the desert. Unfortunately, while most of the creatures from the seek-and-find appear in poses that match the illustrations in the challenge, not all of them are consistently represented. (This book was reviewed digitally with 7-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 53.3% of actual size.)
Animated and educational. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-358-12506-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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