MY FRIENDS THE FLOWERS

A rhyming celebration of flowers gets a Silly Symphony artistic treatment with surprising success. At first blush, the grinning daffodil, morning glory and four-o’clock blossoms on the cover appear to have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The verse, too, often struggles for both rhyme and scansion. But the enthusiasm that produced both is infectious, and as bloom after bloom, from the familiar—marigold, forsythia—to the more exotic—hellebore, nicotiana—and the downright unexpected—prickly pear, red maple—is introduced, readers can’t help but appreciate the sheer variety of them all. Kennedy’s mid-20th-century–Disney-inspired acrylics invest all the flowers with personality, from the bespectacled Franklinia to the thuggish (“shady”) impatiens, and provide a small army of cheery bugs to watch over them. Ten pages of backmatter provide facts on each flower, instructions for three simple gardens and general gardening information. (Picture book. 4-8)