My Garden

Just plain perfect.

With its adroit look at a child's colorful imagination, My Garden is as fresh and inviting as spring after winter.

Spring colors of lilac, daffodil yellow, pale blue, and leafy green bloom in Caldecott Medalist Henkess fanciful account of the great outdoors. My mother has a garden. Im her helper, explains a girl, who wears a petunia-pink dress and a golden straw hat. She dutifully waters and weeds, but if "I" had a garden, she says, things would be less predictable. Gazing up at sunflowers, she giggles to imagine them colored in dots and plaids. She picks a flower and, in her perfect garden, another pops right up. Seashells and jelly beans sprout, disliked vegetables are invisible, and pests are not a problem: the rabbits would be chocolate and I would eat "them". At this, the girl nibbles a bunny, surrounded by cocoa rabbits wearing telltale ribbons. Henkes gives the young storyteller a matter-of-fact voice and a sly sense of humor, while dewy watercolors and ink picture her reveling in a magical world of plants, birds, and butterflies. Even as the story elevates the wonders of nature into the realm of the fanciful, it reminds readers to appreciate everyday flowers and soil. Ages 27. "(Feb.)"

Copyright 2010 Publishers Weekly Used with permission.

PreS-Gr 2 - Imagination grows and spreads from the fertile pages of this book to the minds of young readers. Henkes's familiar illustration style invites children into a most unusual garden. It never needs weeding, the flowers are ever-blooming, and colors change just by thinking of them (even into patterns). "In my garden, rabbits wouldn't eat the lettuce because the rabbits would be chocolate and I would eat them." Jelly beans would grow on bushes. Tomatoes would be the size of beach balls, but "carrots would be invisible because I don't like carrots!" Intense pastel colors and soft navy outlines bring the perfect garden to life. Colors splash across the pages, matching the enthusiasm of the text. The vibrancy and size of the artwork make this an excellent choice for groups, large or small. A must for every library."Carolyn Janssen, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, OH"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.