Favorite Book (this week): The Curious Garden

The Curious Garden
Peter Brown
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
BookPeople
Amazon


Books about gardens are generally pretty popular at our house. We've read Lois Ehlert's Planting a Rainbow probably 2,762 times in the last three years. But this is not just a book about gardens. It's about persistence, resilience and beauty. It's about creating new things, believing in yourself and growing in unexpected ways. It's about preparation, patience and hope.

Brown's tale of a boy who decides to help a struggling garden (eventually helping the garden spread throughout the city), manages to be both whimsical and realistic at the same time. Readers will love the amusing ways the gardens grow, from popped up where they don't belong and squeezed into impossibly narrow spaces to parades of animal topiary and lining lush park steps. Kids will also love looking for a tiny Liam in many of the illustrations, seeing his interactions with the gardens (singing and covert ops to transplant seedlings) and watching him grow as the garden itself grows.

Inspired by Manhattan's High Line garden, Brown's book is a reminder that there is always a way to create beauty - all it takes is a little persistence, and a little love.

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