Tuesday Storytime: Growing Green

A fun trio of books today - all about green growing things.

Weeds Find a Way
Cindy Jenson-Elliott, illustrated by Carolyn Fisher
ISBN: 9781442412606
Mixed-media digital collage, very busy, very organic.  Lilting poetic wording.

This is a lovely poem to weeds; how their seeds and roots and flowers are tenacious and enduring and persistent and deep-rooted, and also beautiful and practical and natural and free.  This is another serendipitous delivery-discovery, and I'm glad to add it to my repertoire.  It will probably come up in garden or green-thumb storytimes with On Meadowview Street or The Curious Garden or Sarah Stewart's The Gardener.

Green
Laura Vaccaro Seeger
ISBN: 9781596433977
Beautiful messy splotchy painterly spread-page scenes with cute little cut-outs revealing snatches of upcoming and previous pages.

This is a lovely book.  It technically only very loosely fits the theme, but most of the scenes are natural ones, and several others are of fruits or vegetables, so it totally fits.  Very little wording, but the word "green" is on every page, surrounded by all the different shades of greens that can be found.  Lovely concept book, and very beautifully done.

A Tree is Nice
Janice May Udry, illustrated by Marc Simont
ISBN: 0060261560
Early propaganda, illustrated in classic "Dick and Jane" style, half b&w and half in color.  Caldecott.

Trees are nice, and this sweet simple Arbor-day-ish book illustrates a variety of reasons in sweet and simple language, and in ways that appeal to kids.  Trees are nice because of leaves rustling in the wind, and shade that the baby sleeps under, and tall trunks and limbs to play pirate ship on, and apples to eat and shelter for the house.  All of this and more, in simple persuasive speech, surrounded by simple, old-fashioned, nostalgic illustrations.  A solid read, and a bit longer in the telling than I expected, but still well within the age-range for me.  I think this might be the first time I've actually used it in storytime, and I'm glad I took the chance.