The Wind's Garden
Roberts (Valentine Mice; Follow Me!) focuses on two parallel gardens--one carefully cultivated, the other the product of nature--in this cheery picture book. "I planted a garden. The wind planted a garden, too," announces the narrator, a lively girl with a green thumb and carrot-colored hair. As she charts the growth of both gardens in simple phrases ("The wind didn't weed. Its garden just grew"), readers can see for themselves the contrast between the girl's carefully tended plot with its neatly ordered rows, and the result of what happens when the wind "swirled around, throwing seeds to the ground, here and there and everywhere." The narrator makes no ultimate judgments; instead she happily appreciates the beauties of both styles. Like the gardens themselves, Greenberg's (On My Street) vibrant folk-art style gouache paintings burst with life, from the swooping curlicues used to indicate the wind to the zinnia-bright colors of the flowers and surrounding yard. Pink and purple sheets hang on the clothesline; a peach-colored house boasts a periwinkle door; a rolling line of blue hills anchors the horizon. This breezy tale ends with a few brief tips from the author on cultivating gardens both domestic and wild. Ages 3-7.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.