Happy Friday, Everyone!
So, over Memorial Day weekend I put my planters full of flowers out on the back porch for summer. (Please see exhibit A)
Exhibit A
(I refer to them as “flowers” because I grew up in an apartment in New York City where our windowsills were decorated with pigeons and we didn’t have a back porch. I’ll hazard that some of my “flowers” are petunias. And some others are possibly geraniums. But that’s as far out on that limb as I’ll crawl! 🙂 )
Anyway, then we had a violent thunderstorm with fierce wind and giant hail.
I will not depress you with exhibit B – the resulting carnage. I’ll just say it was sad! Very sniff VERY sniffsniff sad!
While I am waiting for my poor little flowers to resurrect themselves (which is uphill work for them due to continued rain and not very much healing sunshine), I will share a gorgeous picture book about a garden that does grow 🙂 I think it will inspire us all to go out and spend the weekend digging in dirt 🙂
Title: Green Green: A Community Gardening Story
Written By: Marie Lamba & Baldev Lamba
Illustrated By: Sonia Sanchez
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, May 9, 2017, fiction
Suitable For Ages: 2-5
Themes/Topics: community, environmental preservation, gardening, city, nature
Opening: “Green green,
Fresh and clean.
Brown brown,
Dig the ground.”
Brief Synopsis: First a green meadow is wide and fresh and clean for kids to play in, and brown dirt is just right for digging. But buildings grow up around the green space, gradually crowding it out. Will the community lose their green?
text copyright Marie Lamba & Baldev Lamba 2017, illustration copyright Sonia Sanchez 2017
Links To Resources: wonderful resource material at the back of the book gives a guide to making your world more green, helping bees and butterflies, and making bee and butterfly decorations.
Why I Like This Book: Simply told with gorgeous pictures (so beautiful I couldn’t decide which interior spread to share because I wanted to share them all!), this story is perfect to introduce youngest readers to the idea of community gardening. It’s also empowering because it’s the kids who band together to save the green space. I love the concept that even if a child lives in the city, he or she can have a garden and care for our earth. The illustrations are wonderful and offer something for everyone from plants to animals to construction vehicles 🙂
text copyright Marie Lamba & Baldev Lamba 2017, illustration copyright Sonia Sanchez 2017
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do 🙂
For the complete list of books with resources, please visit Perfect Picture Books.
PPBF folks, please add your titles and post-specific links (and any other info you feel like filling out 🙂 ) to the form below so we can all come see what fabulous picture books you’ve chosen to share this week!
Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!!! 🙂 I’m off to the Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley Conference. I hope I’ll see some of you there! 🙂
Susanna Leonard Hill 
Susanna, I am so sorry for the crazy weather. Hope that your flowers do survive and soom thrive. What a lovely desk. I’d sit out there and write all summer. Thanks for sharing Green Green. What a fun book, I can’t wait to read ti.
Love your cute choice for this PPBF, Susanna. The zany colours in the illustrations are beautiful, very spring. Hoping your flowers will continue to bloom, enjoy your weekend and conference.
Perfect timing! My husband will be teaching summer school, and plans on having the students work in the community garden!
Good luck with your flowers. I’m told that plants are resilient. Like humans. May that be the truth. I love reading on my rocker on my porch listening to the birds and attending to my garden. (ie, watching the plants lift toward the sun). Beautiful book you’ve highlighted today.
Flowers lead a tough live – but those guys look like survivors. My choice of flowers (and they grow in my lawn): buttercups, violets, and dandelions.
I love the community gardening book – it’s a fun way to talk about evolution of cities and gardens and community.
I just saw this book recently and it is beautiful! I love the idea of introducing children to community gardens. Kids need to know the important of community and working together.
I put in my veggies last weekend on the brief moment of nice weather…then we had lots and lots of cold rain, but I think all is well.
Good luck with your flowers, Susanna…and thank you so much for the beautiful book and great review! One of my favorite activities with my own children and the ones I taught was to garden. My son, Peter, says some of his fondest memories are of picking the corn he had planted and eating it before he got into the house. 😉
Stunning art! My garden finally got planted , but flea beetles are attacking – lost a few tomatoes already!
I met Marie & purchased Green, Green at NJSCBWI. I love it! Reminds me of Peter Brown’s Highline book.
I hope your plants revive – this has been such a crazy spring/early summer!
What a lovely book! I enjoyed hearing Maria speak at a workshop not long ago. I look forward to sharing this book with friends. Thanks! Happy summer!
Oh, what fun colors! Love those illustrations!
I feel ya, S. Mom quickly documents our outdoor summer flowers with photo evidence of their beauty. Then we spend the next couple of months watching them die a slow, tortured, miserable death. It’s an annual tradition!
Love and licks,
Cupcake
I was TOTALLY enchanted by the cover illustrations – and all the rest. Definitely picking this one up!
Thanks so much for this lovely post and review! I just spotted it today (oh the vagaries of google!).
You brightened up my day, Susanna! And thanks to everyone for all your lovely comments!!
🙂
Marie