Author: Monica Wellington
Illustrator: Monica Wellington
Age Range: 3-5
Genre: Picture books
I generally kill plants. I can't keep them alive. Both my parents have green thumbs, evidenced by the beautiful gardens that they maintain, but I do not do well at growing things. As such, my daughters don't really understand the concept of growing and maintaining a garden, which is one reason why I love this book so much.
In this book, Zinnia decides to create a beautiful flower garden. She goes through all the steps of turning over the dirt, removing the stones, making rows, planting seeds, watering, and then waiting for the flowers to bloom. At the end, when all of her flowers are blooming, she sets up a little stand and allows people to come in and pick a bucket of flowers, sharing her beautiful floral bounty. When my 4 year old daughter saw that, she said, "I wish I could have a garden like that to share flowers with everyone." It made my heart sink a bit, because I knew that it wasn't likely going to be in her future, given where we live.
In addition, there are illustrations explaining the life cycle of the butterfly, different types of clouds, and diagrams identifying the many different parts of the flowers. The illustrations are very cute and informative and provide an additional layer of information, for someone who is a bit older. The illustrations combine use of photographs of real plants as well as beautiful colorful bright art. The eye is immediately drawn to the book for its of color and contrast.
It's a cute little gem of a book, especially wonderful for anyone who WANTS to learn how to create a garden, or perhaps for someone who wishes to have their own garden but cannot.
LOL! We have one thing in common. We're both have brown thumbs. I don't feel alone anymore :) I'm taking up gardening, reading books and online and enlisting help from gardeners at nurseries. So far, nothing is growing like they should but I hope to make some progress eventually.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by RoseBelle...hopefully we can break our brown thumbs and grow some green ones...although I have to say my recent forays into gardening have not been that successful.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you recommend getting books??? Do you usually buy them at amazon, at a local bookstore, half-book stores or all of the above??
ReplyDeleteI get most of mine on Amazon or read them at the library. The advantage of amazon is no tax, free shipping (if you buy enough) and often with kids paperbacks they have a buy 3 get one for free deal...it's pretty nice.
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