Gentle encouragement for the youngest of gardeners.
Berries, apples, and pears, yum!
With the help of the child narrator, the aptly named Granny Root grows berry bushes and fruit trees, harvests when it’s time, and then eats or preserves the bounty. This entry in the author’s four-book Follow My Food series provides a step-by-step account of fruit growing with simple words and colorful, stylized pictures. Granny and the youngster prepare the soil, plant berry bushes and seedlings, prune, and weed. Putting nets over the strawberry plants keeps birds away. In summer, Granny waters, and the two watch and wait until the fruit is ripe. The end of summer means it’s time for apples and pears; they bite into the fruit, bake some of it into pies, and preserve the rest as jam. This concise U.K. import will satisfy young listeners or early readers curious about where their food comes from; it’s also a lovely example of intergenerational bonding. Backmatter includes a matching activity, further information (with a reminder that eating local fruit in season is better for the planet), and a page that lists four kinds of fruit (“berries,” “stone fruit,” “pome fruit,” and “dry fruit”), with examples. Finally, the book has a recipe for fruit salad—enough for the whole family. Granny and the child are brown-skinned.
Gentle encouragement for the youngest of gardeners. (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781662670701
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Enticing and eco-friendly.
Why and how to make a rain garden.
Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.
Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781324052357
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A boon for beaver storytimes or young naturalists living near beaver streams.
Readers learn about a keystone species and the habitat they create.
In a “House That Jack Built” style (though minus the cumulative repetition), Sonenshine introduces children to beavers. Beginning with a beaver who’s just gnawed down a willow near their lodge, the author moves on to the dam that blocks the stream and protects their domed home and then to the yearlings that are working to repair it with sticks and mud. Muskrats and a musk turtle take advantage of the safety of the beavers’ lodge, while Coyote tries (and fails) to breach it. Then the book turns to other animals that enjoy the benefits of the pond the beavers have created: goose, ducklings, heron, moose. While the beavers aren’t in all these illustrations, evidence of them is. And then suddenly a flood takes out both the dam and the beavers’ lodge. So, the beavers move upstream to find a new spot to dam and build again, coming full circle back to the beginning of the book. Hunter’s ink-and–colored pencil illustrations have a scratchy style that is well suited to the beavers’ pelts, their watery surroundings, and the other animals that share their habitat. Careful observers will be well rewarded by the tiny details. Beavers are mostly nocturnal, which isn’t always faithfully depicted by Hunter. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A boon for beaver storytimes or young naturalists living near beaver streams. (beaver facts, glossary, further resources) (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1868-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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