Posted on by TracyC

The Bracelet

The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida, illustrated by Joanna Yardley, 1976, 1993.

Emi is a young girl, a second-grader, in a Japanese American family in 1942. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there was widespread paranoia about people of Japanese descent in the United States. In response to the fear that these people could secretly be spies for Japan, many of them were ordered to go to internment camps for the duration of the war. Emi’s family is one of those families.

When the story begins, her family has packed and is preparing to report to one of these camps. Emi is sad to leave her home and worried about where they are going. It’s particularly hard for her to leave her best friend. Before they go, her friend stops by with a special present, a bracelet for her to remember her friend by. Emi promises that she will always wear it.

The move to the camp involves a long bus ride and crowds of people. When they get there, Emi’s family is assigned to a barrack made out of an stable because the camp is in an old, converted racetrack (this is a description of Tanforan Assembly Center from real life), and it’s not a very homey place. It’s dirty and still smells like horses. The camp is surrounded by barbed wired wire, and they have to line up with everyone else for meals. They know that this is a temporary camp and that they will later be sent somewhere else. (They will be sent to Topaz.)

Then, Emi suddenly realizes that she no longer has her bracelet. She must have lost it somewhere in the move to the camp! They look everywhere, but they can’t find it. How is Emi going to remember her best friend without that special present?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

The author of this book, Yoshiko Uchida, has also written other books about Japanese internment camps during World War II and the experiences of the people there and their experiences with returning to normal life after the war. When she was a young woman, she and her family were also held in the Japanese internment camps, giving her direct knowledge of the conditions there and insight into the affect that the camps had on the lives of ordinary people. The experiences of the people in her stories follow the experiences of her own family.

This particular book would make a good introduction to the concept of Japanese internment camps for children. It shows one of the camps through the eyes of a young girl, and it’s not a very friendly or welcoming place because it is essentially a prison. It’s an unfair prison because the people there haven’t done anything wrong, and that comes through in the story. (“They hadn’t done anything wrong. They were being treated like the enemy just because they looked like the enemy. … They loved America, but American didn’t love them back. And it didn’t want to trust them.”) They’re only there because some people are suspicious that some of them might do something wrong because of their ethnic background. Kids can understand the unfairness of the situation and Emi’s feelings at leaving her home and her friend. It’s not an easy topic to discuss, but the feeling of unfairness is a universal one, experienced by humans of all ages. Everyone has experienced something in their life, big or small, that was unfair, so the emotion isn’t difficult to understand.

Nobody is physically hurt doing the story, and nobody is called any racial slurs, making this a relatively gentle introduction to a difficult topic. There are soldiers with guns watching the people going to the camp, and they wonder if those guards are really going to shoot anyone who tries to run away, but nobody is shot. The presence of the armed guards is the most overtly scary part of the book, although there is also an atmosphere of general uncertainty because Emi and her family don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Through Emi’s thoughts, kids can understand that these are ordinary people who have been caught up in something larger that has changed and complicated their lives. The book doesn’t cover much about life at the camp because it’s a short book that mainly covers Emi’s feelings at leaving home and her arrival at the camp, but it sets the scene well for longer, more difficult books, to fill in the blanks.

The bright side to the story is that Emi realizes that her memories of her friend don’t depend on a physical object, like the bracelet. She has memories of all the fun things she and her friend did together, and as long as they remember each other, they will still be friends. We don’t know from this book whether Emi will ever see this friend again or not, but I think that Emi appears as a secondary character in other books by the same author. I think she’s a friend of Yuki in Journey to Topaz and Journey Home.

The edition of the book that I used for my review is the one from 1993. There is a section in the back of the book with historical information about the Japanese internment, and the section in my edition has updated information that wouldn’t have been in the original version of the book. The story was first printed in 1976, but the historical section in my edition ends with the conclusions reached in 1982 by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians established by President Carter to investigate the causes of the Japanese internment. The conclusion of that commission was the Japanese internment was the product of racism, paranoia, and hysteria on the part of the public and a failure in leadership on the part of the government for trying to placate the hysterics at someone else’s expense instead of holding firm, providing reassurance and firm leadership, and emphasizing the true reality of their unreasonable fears. (Remember, that doesn’t just come from me or from this picture book. Those were the very real conclusions of an official government commission. I do agree with that assessment of the situation, though. I strong feelings against people who are obsessed with conspiracy theories and insist on spreading them because rumors do very real harm.) I think the earlier edition also had different illustrations because the copyright on these illustrations is only for 1993. I really liked the pictures in this book. They’re colorful pictures that look like watercolor paintings. They have almost a dream-like quality that fits well with the theme of memory.

As I was reading this and writing my review, I tried to remember how old I was when I first learned about Japanese internment camps during WWII and what books I might have read about it when I was a kid. I want to say that I was probably about 10 to 12 when I was first introduced to the topic, and I’m positive that I knew about it by the time I finished middle school, but I can’t remember exactly. I don’t think I read many books about it when I was young, although I remember that Farewell to Manzanar was one that was often recommended. I think my first introduction to the topic was probably either non-fiction, from history class in school and things my parents told me, but I also have a vague memory of being told about Farewell to Manzanar and asking what it was about, so that might have been what started the conversation.

Posted on by TracyC

Coat of Many Colors

Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton, 1969, 1994, 2016.

It’s fall, and a little girl needs a new coat. Her family doesn’t have much money, but someone gives her mother a box of rags, which her mother sews into a patchwork coat for the girl.

As she sews, the mother tells the girl the Bible story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors. The little girl loves her new coat, associating it with the Bible story and her mother’s love for her.

When the girl goes to school in her new coat, other kids tease her because having an improvised coat made from other people’s rags is a sign of poverty. The other kids know that her mother made her that coat because she couldn’t afford to buy one.

However, the girl looks at the situation differently. Rather than focus on what her family couldn’t buy, she loves what they gave her. The coat is a sign of her mother’s love and sewing skill. Whether a person is rich or poor depends not just on what they have but on their feelings about what they have. When a person looks at the good points of what they have rather than what they don’t have, they feel rich.

My Reaction

The reason why I put multiple copyright dates for this book is that the story has been printed in multiple versions. The text of the book is from a song called Coat of Many Colors written by Dolly Parton in 1969 (listen on YouTube). The text is literally the words of the song, and it’s fun to listen to the song and read the book together! The other two copyright dates are because the story has been printed as a picture book more than once, with different illustrators. The illustrations I show here are from the latest version, from 2016.

There’s a very similar story to this one that I reviewed earlier, The Rag Coat, which is also a picture book about a girl with a patchwork coat who is teased by other kids at school. The Rag Coat was published a few years before Coat of Many Colors was first published as a book, but years after Coat of Many Colors was published as a song, and a note in The Rag Coat acknowledges the song as part of the inspiration for the story. The story in The Rag Coat doesn’t take quite the same turn as Coat Many Colors because it doesn’t relate the girl’s coat to the Bible story and because the way the girl in that book reconciles herself and the other students at school to her rag coat is pointing out that the rags that make up her patchwork coat came from their families and that she knows the stories behind each of them, the stories of her classmates’ lives. It’s a little longer story with a little more depth and backstory behind the coat, but I like Coat of Many Colors for its lighthearted approach to the idea of what makes a person rich or poor and depths that are more implied than stated.

The connection to the story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors is important because, in the Bible story, Joseph’s colorful coat was a sign of his father’s love for him, and in this picture book, part of what makes the patchwork coat made of rags important to the girl is the fact that her mother made it for her and it’s a sign of her mother’s love. There is a section in the back of the book where Dolly Parton explains that the story is based on a real incident from her life, and that’s why the song she wrote about it has always been special to her. She also wants people to consider what it really means to be rich or poor. In both the story and in real life, Dolly’s attitude was focusing on the richness of what she had (like an original coat, handmade by a loving mother) rather than the things she couldn’t afford, and that’s what she recommends to other people.

Actually, it occurs to me, too, that in the early 21st century, a bespoke patchwork coat might actually be considered both more stylish and more valuable than any ordinary coat bought off the rack from any store. It’s the stuff of cottagecore fans and Etsy aficionados! Sewing is a time-consuming hobby that requires skill and can cost considerably more than buying a cheap coat at Walmart. People who can do it really well can charge a fair amount for their work. The only ways to get something like that these days are either to do it yourself, know someone who’s willing to make it for you, or be willing to pay for it. (I wrote this in July 2025, and I checked the going rate for a patchwork coat on Etsy. It was about $100 at that time. The cheapest options were about $84 dollars, and some were more than $200, with some vintage coats priced at more than $300.)

I find this hilarious, that what the kids who went to school with Dolly Parton back in the day teased her about as a sign of poverty would cost quite a lot to buy from someone else these days, with older “vintage” ones costing the most of all. With the rise of cottagecore and other pop culture influences, some of their grandkids would probably have begged to own something like that. (Remember when Harry Styles wore a patchwork sweater, and a bunch of people made their own versions or sold patterns to make them? I do!) Their families might not have the skill to pull off making such a thing themselves, which may be yet another way of looking at who’s poor and who’s rich. Remember this the next time someone’s wearing something that seems a little odd or improvised. It might turn out to be ahead of its time, a smarter use of money, a unique demonstration of real skill, and a far more interesting or timeless fashion statement than something that’s more generically trendy that will look cringy in yearbook photos in 5 to 10 years. Take the long view!

Dolly Parton said that the original “coat of many colors” that her mother made for her when she was a child wore out long ago and was probably remade into something else, like a quilt, because her family never wasted anything. However, there is still a picture of young Dolly wearing the coat, and after she wrote her song about it, her mother made another one similar to it, as best she could remember, to show what it was like. This replica coat, made by her mother, is the one on display in Dolly’s Chasing Rainbows Museum. In 2015, this story was made into a television movie, although the movie had some darker themes in it, with the family coping with the death of Dolly’s baby brother.

Posted on by TracyC

Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie

Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie by Peter and Connie Roop, pictures by Peter E. Hanson, 1985.

The book begins with a note from the authors about the real life Abbie Burgess. The story is based on a real girl and her family who lived in a Maine lighthouse in the 1850s and a real incident when Abbie’s father had to leave to get supplies, so Abbie had to tend the lights during a terrible storm in his absence.

Captain Burgess is a lighthouse keeper in the mid-19th century, and his family lives in the lighthouse with him. One day, while his wife is ill, he decides that he needs to go for supplies. His wife needs medicine, and the family also needs food and more oil for the lamps in the lighthouse.

While he is away, he puts his daughter, Abbie, in charge of tending the lights. Abbie is the eldest of his three daughters, and although she has never tended the lights alone before, she knows how to carry out the necessary chores of cleaning the lamps, trimming their wicks, and adding oil to the lamps. Ships approaching land on this coast depend on the lights of the lighthouse to help guide them, so they must be kept burning.

Abbie is a little nervous about handling the task by herself, and her sisters worry about what will happen if there’s a storm. Abbie assures them that they will be able to handle it, as long as they are careful about how they use their remaining supplies. If there is a storm, she knows that her father’s return will be delayed. As the girls go about their routine and taking care of their mother, they see that the sky is darkening and a storm is approaching.

At sundown, Abbie climbs to the top of each of the two the lighthouse towers and lights each of the lamps. However, she cannot sleep that night, worrying about the possibility of the lights going out. When she goes to check on them, she discovers that ice is covering the windows, so she has to scrape it off so the lights will show. The next day, she cleans the lamps and gets some sleep.

That’s fine for one night, but the storm gets worse, and Abbie has to tend the lights for longer than expected. Because of the weather, her father’s return is delayed for over a week. Abbie saves her chickens from a huge wave, and she is nearly washed away herself! Abbie and her mother and sisters move into one of the towers for more protection. Their supplies run low, and Abbie is exhausted from the work of tending the lights, but she manages to keep them burning!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Reading Rainbow book.

My Reaction

I think remember this book from when I was a kid, although I think there was another version of this story that I might be remembering.

Lighthouse stories offer a fascinating look at a way of life that has vanished. Modern lighthouses are electronic and fully automated, so there is no need for anyone to live in a lighthouse now. The lights that Abbie tends are huge oil lamps with large reflectors behind them to make them look brighter for passing ships. During the 19th century, lights like that needed constant tending to make sure that the lights were cleaned of grime from the smoke when they were cool enough, relit and refueled with oil when necessary, and the windows of the lighthouse kept clean and clear. It was physically intense work that required someone to be constantly on duty at the lighthouse to take care of the routine chores and deal with any emergencies that arose.

Because lighthouses were off the coast, positioned to warn ships away from dangerous areas with rocks, they were isolated places. The people who lived there rarely left, and when they did, they had to make sure that someone who knew how to tend the lights was there, on duty. It could be a somewhat lonely life, and the people who did that type of job and the family members who helped them had to take care of whatever was necessary to keep the lights burning because other people’s lives were depending on them. It can be easy to romanticize lighthouse keepers’ self-sufficiency or the idea of living with family apart from society and in touch with nature, but it was a very difficult life. That’s what makes Abbie’s story so heroic. She had to do a difficult job that not every young girl would be able to manage. It was hard, exhausting work and not fun, but it was an important job that preserved the safety of passing ships and the lives of people on them.

Posted on by TracyC

Island Boy

Island Boy story and pictures by Barbara Cooney, 1988.

When the Tibbetts family first moves to the island, they build their house and give the island its name, Tibbetts Island. As time passes, there are eventually twelve children in the Tibbetts family, and the youngest of them is little Matthais.

The boys in the family help on their family’s farm and go hunting and fishing. At first, Matthais’s older brothers think he’s too little to help. As he grows up, though, he learns how to be more helpful, and he joins the other children in their lessons in reading and writing.

As time passes, the Tibbetts children grow up and leave the island to get married or get jobs working in their uncle’s shipyard. Eventually, Matthais becomes a cabin boy on one of his uncle’s ships. After years of experience, Matthais become the captain of the ship. He visits many places as a sailor, but he finds himself wanting to return home.

When Matthais marries a young schoolteacher named Hannah, they move into his family’s old home on the island and restart the farm because his aging parents have moved to the mainland. Together, they have three daughters.

Over time, Matthais’s daughters grow up, and he and Hannah grow old. His daughters marry and move away, and Hannah dies. Around this time, new people begin moving to the area, building vacation homes and bringing pleasure boats. Unlike the Tibbetts family, they’re there to enjoy the countryside for fun and not for farming. They’re called “rusticators” because they enjoy the rustic lifestyle. One of Matthais’s daughters points out that he could sell the family’s island to these people, but he can’t bring himself to do it because it’s the family’s old home.

Following the death of her husband, one of Matthais’s daughters moves back to the island with her small son, also named Matthais. The elderly Matthais helps to raise his young grandson and teach him about life on the island. The elderly Matthais eventually dies in a boating accident in rough weather, and many people come to pay their respects and reflect on his long life, but the younger Matthais’s life is still beginning.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I love the charming, old-fashioned pictures in this book, and it’s a sweet story about a man’s long life and the passing of one generation to the next. As characters comment at the end of the story, Matthais has lived a long and full life. He’s experienced the cozy family life on the island and the beauties of nature, and he’s also traveled and had adventures at sea. He’s raised a family of his own, and he’s set up a home for his daughter and her young son. The end of the story indicates that the cycle of life will continue in this family as the younger Matthais thinks about becoming a sailor like his grandfather and then returning to the island himself.

There’s a sense of stability to the island and its cycles of life and generations. Even when things are changing in the world around them, the nature of the island remains pretty constant, and it’s always a place for members of the family to come home.

Posted on by TracyC

Hattie and the Wild Waves

Hattie and the Wild Waves story and pictures by Barbara Cooney, 1990.

Young Hattie grows up as part of a wealthy family in a red brick house with beautiful woodwork because her father is in the woodwork business. She comes from a family of German immigrants living in New York around the turn of the last century. When she and her siblings start talking about what they want to do when they’re grown up, Hattie says that she wants to be a painter. At first, the others think she means painting houses, but what she actually means is that she wants to be an artist.

While Hattie’s siblings make life hard for the series of nursemaids who come to look after them (and are ultimately fired for reacting to their teasing) and play cards with the cook and maid, Hattie likes to spend her time drawing. The cook’s daughter admires her drawings. Hattie never minds it when she’s confined to bed with a cold because it just gives her more time to draw.

When Hattie’s relative come to visit, they always have a big dinner, and they admire a painting that Hattie’s grandfather painted years ago called Cleopatra’s Barge. However, Hattie’s father prefers a drawing that Hattie made of a barge because he thinks it looks more seaworthy. Hattie knows that the people on her mother’s side of the family tend to be musicians and artists. Hattie’s mother is one of the musical members of the family. She teaches Hattie and her sister how to play the piano and how to sew, but Hattie never does either of these very well.

The family spends their summers at a summer house at Far Rockaway with their relatives. The adults like to gather on the veranda and talk, the women sewing and knitting. Sometimes, they go sailing in their boat. Hattie absorbs the details of everything she sees at the seaside and paints pictures.

Hattie loves their summer house, but then, her father sells it and buys a bigger summer house on Long Island. Hattie’s brother and sister think it sounds exciting because it will be like a castle, but Hattie thinks she will miss the wild waves of Far Rockaway.

Their new summer house is incredible. The children ride horses there and have tennis parties. Hattie’s sister is now old enough to have suitors. While everyone is busy with her sister’s suitors and later, her sister’s wedding plans, Hattie takes walks by herself and finds new things to paint.

Hattie’s life continues to change, but she stays true to her dreams, joining the Art Institute to become the painter she’s always wanted to be. Her mother thinks that she will be like her grandfather, but Hattie knows that she will be her own artist.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

Some aspects of the story are similar to Miss Rumphius, another book by Barbara Cooney about a young girl growing up around the turn of the century who has very definite ambitions early in life. Miss Rumphius’s life ambitions aren’t quite the same as Hattie’s, but they each know what they want to do with their lives from an early age and find their own way of adding beauty to the world.

This is a very calm and relaxing story about a girl with a strong ambition early in life to be an artist. She comes from a wealthy family, so she grows up in charming homes and summer houses, surrounded by beauty and with a family that includes other artists, so her family isn’t opposed to her ambition. There are changes that come in the girl’s life as she and her siblings grow up, but nothing tragic or traumatic happens to her. This is a book where readers can enjoy the beautiful atmosphere and artwork.

The author based the story on her own mother, Mae Evelyn Bossert, although the girl in the story is called by a different name. The hotel where the family lives at the end of the story is the Hotel Bossert, which Barbara Cooney’s grandfather built and which was the place where she was born. There are German words and phrases sprinkled throughout the story because this is an immigrant family, and they speak at least some German to each other. Readers can generally tell by context what the characters are saying.

Posted on by TracyC

Jessie’s Island

Jessie’s Island by Sheryl McFarlane, illustrated by Sheena Lott, 1992.

Jessie cousin, Thomas, thinks that life must be dull on the island where she lives because there are so many things to do in the city that her island doesn’t have, like arcades, museums, and concerts. However, Jessie’s mother decides to invite Thomas for a visit so he can see what life on the island is really like.

Much of the story takes the form of letters between the two cousins, first where Thomas brags about all the things there are to do in the city and then a letter from Jessie to Thomas, telling him all the things she will show him when he comes to visit.

Jessie describes animals, like bald eagles, seals, and killer whales. There also an old, abandoned cabin to explore that has trees growing through the roof. They can also climb trees, pick berries, go out in a canoe, dig for clams, and go fishing.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This book is fun because it points out that, no matter where you live, there are things to do and see that you can’t do and see everywhere else. It’s true that the island doesn’t have the shopping malls and museums that the city where Thomas lives has, but it has other things that Thomas can’t experience in the city. The natural environment provides interesting sights, entertainment, and scope for the imagination! Just because their environments are different doesn’t mean that there’s less to do or appreciate.

The pictures in this book are beautiful watercolor paintings that take up whole pages. I love the way the illustrator captured the colors and scenery of the island!

Posted on by TracyC

Imagine a Day

Imagine a Day by Sarah L. Thomson, paintings by Rob Gonsalves, 2005.

This book celebrates the power of imagination and invites readers to use their imaginations, envisioning things that are impossible but amazing!

There isn’t exactly a story to the book. Each page poses something for readers to imagine with an accompanying picture where the shifts from the real world to the imaginary or impossible one are shown.

Each of the illustrations is surreal, with perspective changes from the real to the unreal.

The book invites readers to imagine powerful and amazing things, like “when grace and daring are all we need to build a bridge”, “when you forget how to fall”, “when we build a moat not to keep strangers out, but to welcome them in”, “when everything you build touches the sky”, “when you build the world around you piece by piece”, or “when the edge of the map is only the beginning of what we can explore.” All of this amazing things are things that could happen on a wonderful day! Just imagine a day like that!

The best part of the book is the end when we “Imagine a day … when a book swings open on silent hinges, and a play you’ve never seen before welcomes you home. Imagine … today.” Books are a key that unlocks a person’s imagination!

My Reaction

The pictures are amazing, and they really make the book! The pictures use perspective to shift the characters and their actions from the ordinary world to the extraordinary! Fence posts or toy blocks gradually morph into buildings. Streets become rivers, and rivers become trees. People on swings or bikes start off on the ground and end up above the trees! I’ve shown a number of pictures from this book to show you what they’re like, but there are many more to enjoy!

The pictures are fascinating to look at, and each of them seems like it could represent the beginning of a story. In that way, the book reminds me a little of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The things the book invites readers to imagine are positive, inspiring, and uplifting, and I think this book would be good to use for a story-writing prompts. Even adults can find this enchanting book inspirational for their creative powers!

Posted on by TracyC

Rules of Summer

Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan, 2013.

The book starts with the phrase, “This is what I learned last summer:” On every page, there’s a different “rule of summer”, something that the kid and his brother learned from their summer adventures.

However, they’re not having the ordinary kind of summer adventures. He apparently learned not to leave a red sock on the clothesline when a giant red rabbit appeared, and he learned not to drop his jar when he and his brother were catching falling stars.

The pictures show all kinds of strange things happening, like a giant lizard and weird plants spilling into the living room, which apparently taught the boy not to leave the back door open overnight and a tornado that came after the boy stepped on a snail.

At the end of the book, the two boys sit in front of their tv with pictures of all the strange creatures they’ve seen pinned to the wall. Are they pictures from the boys’ imagination or memories of a fantastic summer?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

The book is set in a gritty, urban environment where some surreal things happen. Either that, or the surreal adventures all take place in the boys’ imaginations. They could be turning regular adventures in the city where they live into sci-fi, dystopian epics. There is no backstory to anything in the book, so it’s all up to the readers’ imaginations whether anything in the book actually happened or not.

Their world may be post-apocalyptic (at least in their imaginations), peopled by all kinds of strange creatures and robots. There are no other humans in the book other than the boys. I don’t really like gritty or dystopian style books or art, but this book appealed to me because it leaves so much up to the imagination, including whether or not the boys just imagined everything. To me, the last picture, where the boys are just sitting in front of their tv with pictures they’ve drawn all over the walls suggest that they imagined their fantastic summer adventures, but that’s never clarified. In fact, there are a couple of additional pictures after the story ends that suggest maybe it wasn’t all imagination, but you can make up your own mind.

Posted on by TracyC

The Curious Garden

The Curious Garden by Peter Brown, 2009.

A boy named Liam lives in a dreary city where there aren’t any gardens or green spaces. Most people in the city spend most of their time inside. However, Liam likes to explore outside.

One day, while exploring some disused train tracks, he finds a few plants struggling to survive. Liam doesn’t know much about plants, but he decides to help them by giving them water. Gradually, he begins to learn more about what will help the plants, and they begin to grow and spread into a small garden.

As Liam helps the plants, they begin to spread all along the old railroad tracks. During the winter, the plants are covered in snow, and many of them are killed or have suffered badly from the cold. However, because Liam spent the winter studying about plants and gathering some gardening tools, he is able to restart the garden.

As the garden spreads through the city, other people begin to notice, and they start joining Liam in tending the garden. Greenery begins taking over places and things that are disuses and abandoned, and people encourage the plants to grow where they can enjoy them. Because of their efforts, the city is transformed!

There is an author’s note in the back of the book about the inspiration for the story. There was an elevated train in Manhattan that was shut down in 1980, and plants took over the abandoned tracks. The author, Peter Brown, considered what it would be like if the phenomenon took over an entire city.

My Reaction

The pictures in the book are great, and some pages are full pictures with no text, just showing how the garden grows and spreads through abandoned places in the city. I love how this story was inspired by the way plants take over abandoned places in real life. Plants can grow in some unlikely places, when nothing interferes with them, and in the story, the boy discovers that they can spread further with a little help.

By the end of the story, his entire city is completely transformed into a greener, more eco-friendly place. It’s not just that there are more plants and green spaces in his city, but the factories that we see in early scenes are no longer putting out all that smoke by the end, and we see windmills in the pictures as alternative forms of energy production. We aren’t told exactly why some things are changed about this city, but it seems like the increasing presence of the green spaces has caused people to change aspects of their lives and businesses to accommodate and preserve them. It’s an idyllic solution that doesn’t show a lot of the conflict that occurs in real life, when some people are ready for a change and others just don’t want to change. Still, I like this mage of a hopeful future because it comes as an antidote to the dystopian quality that we see in many forms of modern entertainment.

Posted on by TracyC

In the Garden with Dr. Carver

In the Garden with Dr. Carver by Susan Grigsby, 2010.

This picture book is about George Washington Carver, as told by a young girl named Sally.

The first time Sally sees him is when he’s traveling with his wagon, pulled by a mule. Sally knows that Dr. Carver is a famous plant scientist from Tuskagee and that he uses his wagon as a kind of mobile school. It contains seeds, plants, and gardening tools, and people come to Dr. Carver for advice about growing plants. The nutrients in the soil of this area have been depleted by growing cotton, and Dr. Carver has been advising them about how to restore the soil. He also advises them about new ways to use common crops.

Dr. Carver visits Sally’s school to help the children with their garden. He teaches them how to use observation to notice the conditions that benefits plants and figure out how to help plants that aren’t doing well. When a boy is about to kill a spider, Dr. Carver stops him, pointing out that the spider helps their garden by eating bugs that are pests for the plants. He teaches the children that everything is part of an ecosystem (although he doesn’t use that word) and that they need to observe and understand the roles each plant and creature has in the ecosystem before deciding to eliminate or change anything. The reason why they remove weeds like dandelions is that their presence doesn’t help the other plants, and they take resources the other plants need. Although, he also shows them that dandelions are edible, so they are not wasted.

Dr. Carver teaches the children about restoring the nutrients in depleted soil using fertilizer and compost made from decaying plant matter and organic materials that most people simply throw away. Dr. Carver teaches them not to waste anything, helping them to make a scarecrow and markers for their plants from scraps of wood and other things people have thrown away.

Eventually, Dr. Carver has to return to Tuskagee, but the lessons he teaches the children stay with them.

There is a section at the back of the book that explains that Sally and her school are fictional, but George Washington Carver was a real person and the story is based around his life and writings. He was born as a slave in Missouri about a year before the abolition of slavery, so he grew up as a free person. He began learning about agriculture and botany from an early age, and as he grew older, he sought out schools that would help him further his knowledge and share it with others. He taught at Iowa State College before Booker T. Washington (see More Than Anything Else for a picture book about his youth) recruited him to be the head of Tuskagee‘s Department of Agriculture in 1896. He also believed in bringing education to people who couldn’t come to a college to learn by sending out bulletins about farming techniques and booklets for teachers in lower grades to use in their classrooms. His mobile school in a wagon was another form of outreach that has been imitated in other places.

My Reaction

I enjoy books about historical figures, and I found this story about George Washington Carver gentle and fascinating. There are some parts that I think I appreciate more as an adult than I would have as a child, making this a book that I think would appeal to readers across different ages and something that parents and teachers would enjoy sharing with children.

Although Sally wasn’t a real person, the lessons she and her classmates receive from George Washington Carver help to illustrate Carver’s real-life work and the lessons that he shared with people of his own time. I appreciated the level of detail the story provided about how people can use observational skills to diagnose and fix possible issues with ailing plants, the importance of understanding that plants exist as part of an ecosystem and that gardeners and farmers need to understand how all parts of the ecosystem interact, and how nutrients can be restored to depleted soil. I can’t remember whether I had heard before about how cotton farming depleted soil nutrients, but I appreciated how that explanation helped explain a real problem facing farmers of Carver’s time and how Carver was helping them to solve it.

I think this book would appeal to fans of cottagecore as well as people interested in American history. The illustrations are beautiful, and even the inner covers are lovely, with small, labeled pictures of plants and creatures. As the book explains, George Washington Carver himself used drawings of plants and creatures in his work, and in the story, he teaches the children to make their own drawings to help themselves study details of the natural world.