ROSE’S GARDEN

Sepia washes give way as pages turn to spots of color and at last a floral carpet of saturated hues in a small, brief tale of a young wanderer named Rose who plants seeds in an empty urban space. Dedicated to Rose Kennedy (and blurbed on the cover by her late son Edward), this tribute to her and to Boston’s recently dedicated Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway contains heavy doses of twee—Rose is first met traveling the world in a big china teapot, for instance, and when her flowers don’t grow right away immigrant children come trooping in bearing paper flowers and personal stories—but it may inspire young audiences to plant gardens of their own. As neither Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy nor Boston is explicitly identified in the text, however, adults will have to provide significant background to child readers for them to make the connection. This particular fable may well be too self-consciously fabulous for its own good. (Picture book. 5-7)