Keeping Greens Green: Nibbles: A Green Tale by Charlotte Middleton

...Every guinea pig in Dandeville loved dandelion leaves. All day long, happy sounds of munching and nibbling filled the air.

Until, one day, that is. Dandelion leaves began to run out.

Christopher Nibbles is just like the rest of the guinea pigs in his town. He loves munching dandelion leaves, and at first they are everywhere. But as the dandelion mania takes over the town, they begin to disappear, nibbled right down to the ground. A sign in the local diner says it all:

MENU TODAY

CABBAGE AND LETTUCE WRAPS ON A BED OF CABBAGE LEAVES

CABBAGE SOUP

CABBAGE AND BROCCOLI QUICHE

Only Nibbles notices why the dandelions are disappearing. The eager eaters of Dandeville are nibbling them down to the stems before they get a chance to flower and scatter their seeds to replant themselves. Then Nibbles spies a happy sight under his bedroom window--the last dandelion plant in town, perhaps in the whole world! Nibbles searches the Internet and visits the library to research dandelion culture, and soon he knows all about composting and cultivating the elusive dandelion and transplants it to a carefully manicured bed.

Nibbles carefully watches his plant mature in secrecy until at last it produces a gloriously white head of seeds. And then it's off to the top of Daisy Chain Hill he goes and with a propitious breeze, he scatters his ripe seeds in the wind to reseed the beloved food crop all over town.

Charlotte Middleton's Nibbles: A Green Tale (Marshall Cavendish, 2010) is an English transplant which is sure to take root wherever Earth Day is celebrated and wherever this parable of responsible consumption can be read. Middleton's tone is gentle, not didactic, and her appealing collage illustrations have texture, depth, and oodles of clever detail (such as the Nibbles' online shopping sites and the book titles in the Dandeville Library) that will appeal to young readers. As Publisher's Weekly says, "Middleton's free-spirited mixed-media illustrations—Nibbles has dimensional whiskers and wears green, floral-print shorts; a “chewy” cabbage appears in photo-collage—keep this allegory about consumption lighthearted."