vegetables

A Garden for Pig

| Tasha

garden_for_pig (1)

A Garden for Pig by Kathryn K. Thurman, illustrated by Lindsay Ward

Pig lives on an apple farm where they grow lots and lots of apples.  And what does Pig get to eat?  Apples, apples, and more apples.  Mrs. Pippins owns the farm and she makes all sorts of apple dishes for pig to eat, but he is sick of apples all the time.  What he really wants to eat are vegetables!  So Pig breaks into the vegetable patch and begins gulping down squash, seeds and all.  When Mrs. Pippin finds him in the garden, she is not happy.  She ties Pig up.  When she catches him trying to break the rope, she shuts him in his pen.  Though Pig tries to escape, he can’t.  But he is determined not to eat any more apples!  Pig notices the next day that his pen looks a lot like a garden.  And after digesting the squash, he has the seeds he needs to make one.

Thurman’s words are simple and have a jaunty rhythm to them.  There are wonderful sounds woven into the book that children will enjoy mimicking.  Pig’s determination and tenacity as well as his creative solution to the problem add to the appeal.

Ward’s collage and cut paper illustrations have a warmth to them.  This is accentuated by the use of fabrics that offer a texture to the images.  In the apple orchard, there are words on the paper that make up the leaves: apple recipes.  The illustrations are large enough to read to a group.  And goodness knows, the poop event at the end will be a hit!

A friendly and warm introduction to gardening in an organic way, this book is a happy addition to gardening story times.  Appropriate for ages 3-5.

Reviewed from copy received from Kane Miller.

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How Does a Seed Grow?

| Tasha

How Does a Seed Grow? by Sue Kim, photographs by Tilde

A visually interesting book all about seeds, sprouts and the harvest.  Each page is dedicated to one kind of seed complete with photographs of the seeds.  That then unfolds to show a large photograph of the seedling in a cutaway format that shows below the ground to the roots and up above the ground for the leaves.  Readers then unfold the page one more time to see a photograph of a child holding the fruit or vegetable.  The text is very simple and rhyming.  The illustrations are the heart of this book.  It is a book guaranteed to fascinate children not only with the unfolding pages but with the details of the seeds and seedlings.

The book covers tomatoes, blueberries, bell peppers, peas and oranges.  The brief rhymes do give a sense of the needs of plants from loose dirt to warmth to water and sunshine.  Readers will enjoy looking at the differences in the shapes and sizes of the seeds and the different ways that the seeds grow.  The children pictured with the fruits and vegetables are multicultural.  One quibble is that some of the pictures are a little blurred, which is noticeable when compared with the crispness of the other images. 

This book will work well in a classroom setting or in a story time focused on spring and plants.  The foldout pages will not survive circulation at a library for long unless they are reinforced with tape.  Appropriate for ages 2-5.

Reviewed from copy received from Simon & Schuster.