Spotlight on... Gardening

--by Hanje Richards

It snowed last Sunday, but planting and gardening season is just around the corner. To help get the kids thinking about gardens, check out some of these books!

.

Curious Garden (Peter Brown). One boy's quest for a greener world... one garden at a time. While out exploring one day, a little boy named Liam discovers a struggling garden and decides to take care of it. As time passes, the garden spreads throughout the dark, gray city, transforming it into a lush, green world. This is an enchanting tale with environmental themes and breathtaking illustrations that become more vibrant as the garden blooms. Red-headed Liam can also be spotted on every page, adding a clever seek-and-find element to this captivating picture book.

.

Dig, Plant, Grow: A Kid’s Guide to Gardening (Felder Rushing). This is the perfect book to introduce the wonderful world of gardening to children, from Getting Started to Easy Projects to Easy Plants (including Annuals, Vegetables, Herbs, Vines, Perennials, Bulbs, Potted Plants, and Shrubs). Get the shovel!

.
.

.

.

Flower Garden (Eve Bunting). Follow the progress of a little girl and her father as they purchase "a garden" and board the bus to carry it home. The pansies, tulips, daffodils, geraniums, and daisies are lovingly planted in a window box, and the candles on the cake are lit -- just as Mom walks in the door to find her daughter, her husband, and her birthday surprise.
.

.

.

The Gardener (Sarah Stewart). Lydia Grace Finch brings a suitcase full of seeds to the big gray city, where she goes to stay with her Uncle Jim, a cantankerous baker. There she initiates a gradual transformation, bit by bit brightening the shop and bringing smiles to customers' faces with the flowers she grows. But it is in a secret place that Lydia Grace works on her masterpiece -- an ambitious rooftop garden -- which she hopes will make even Uncle Jim smile.
.

.

The Kids-Can Press Jumbo Book of Gardening (Karyn Morris). Everything the beginning gardener needs to know about creating wonderful organic gardens in the backyard, on a balcony, or in the schoolyard can be found in this comprehensive and easy-to-follow Jumbo Book. Green-thumb tips, plant checklists, and step-by-step instructions on how to grow everything from tulips to tomatoes make this a practical and fun resource. Kids will learn how to give their gardens a boost the natural way -- without chemical pesticides or herbicides.

Mrs. Spitzer’s Garden (Edith Pattou). Mrs. Spitzer is a wise teacher who knows many things. She knows about gardens. She knows about children. She knows how similar they are, and how both will flourish if tended lovingly. There are many remarkable teachers like Mrs. Spitzer in the world, and Edith Pattou's simple, moving story, along with Tricia Tusa's inspired, whimsical illustrations, celebrate all they do, year after year, to help our children grow and blossom.

.
.

Planting A Rainbow (Lois Ehlert). A dazzling celebration of the colorful variety in a flower garden and the cyclical excitement of gardening. A young child relates in ten simple sentences the yearly cycle and process of planning, planting, and picking flowers in a garden. Mother and child plant bulbs in fall, order seeds from catalogs in winter, eagerly anticipate the first shoots of spring, select seedlings in summer, "and watch the rainbow grow,'' reveling in the opulence of color. The power of this book lies in the glowing brilliance and bold abstraction of the double-page collages. Ehlert combines simple, stylized shapes of flat, high intensity color into abstract yet readily identifiable images of plants and flowers while clearly and colorfully labeling each plant on an adjacent garden marker.

Seed and the Giant Saguaro (Jennifer Ward). It all begins with the tiniest of seeds. Here you will discover how a pack rat, a rattlesnake, a roadrunner, a coyote, and even the clouds above all play a role in helping a small seed grow into a giant saguaro. This wonderful read-aloud brings the wild desert to life and will spark a child's interest in the fascinating creatures that live there. As an added bonus, a timeline, glossary, and fun facts about this gentle giant and the amazing desert are included in the back.