MY LOVE FOR YOU IS LIKE A GARDEN

Smetana’s picture book compares feelings of love to different elements of a garden.

Opening with its title, this work uses simple nonrhyming sentences to describe love, using various metaphors that encourage youngsters to engage all their senses. Love is said to be as “tender as a blade of grass,” “sweet as a flowering lilac,” “cheerful as the robin’s song,” and so on. The lines are brief but powerful and sweet, concluding with an image of two hands with different brown skin tones on either side of a bouquet, incorporating all the flowers featured in the book. However, Smetana’s illustrations are truly the stars of this work. At first glance, they appear to be vibrant watercolors on paper, but closer inspection reveals each image to be a carefully trimmed and assembled collage featuring butterflies, flowers, trees, and other elements. The cut paper is arranged in ingenious ways to suggest, for example, the opened petals of a rose or furrowed soil with marigolds growing in it. The book ends with a glossary, naming various plants and animals in the book and encouraging young readers to go back and look for them all—something that they’ll surely delight in doing again and again.

Endearing, engaging text pairs well with gorgeously executed illustrations for a joyful read.