Posy Parable: Rose's Garden by Peter H. Reynolds

Rose was a dreamer, an adventurer.

But when Rose is done with her voyages across oceans and through many lands, she sails home in her seaworthy teapot, bringing with her the seeds she has gathered from each port and place she visits.

"It's time to plant my garden," she said.

Rose sails up river into the heart of a busy seaport town, where, amid the bustle and press of many old buildings she comes upon a spot that needs her work.

There she found a dusty, forgotten stretch of earth.

"Hmmm." Rose pondered. "This little patch needs some color."

But things do not go well. A flock of hungry birds pilfer her cache of precious seeds, leaving only a few remnants scattered around. And when Rose carefully prepares the soil for these few seeds and trusts them to the ground, the rain is first too heavy and then too sparse. Dry hot summer is followed by frozen winter, and although Rose waits patiently, spring does not bring the hoped-for seedlings. Rose's hopes seem forlorn.

One day a girl approached Rose with a gift. It was a paper flower.

"I made it myself for your garden," the girl said.

Rose places the bright paper flower into the emptiness of her unrealized garden, and soon other children, each with a homemade flower, bring their creations and tell her their stories, until the barren earth is ablaze with color. Rose then hears the sound of a bee and sees that among the paper flowers is a real flower, growing from the soil she tilled so patiently. Soon living blooms crowd her garden.

Rose realized that her travels were over, and she was home. Home in this amazing garden--this splash of color in the middle of a great city.

Peter H. Reynolds' Rose's Garden (Candlewick, 2009) is an inventive parable inspired by the public greenway which grew out of the barren land emerging from the demolition of the overhead highway during Boston's "big dig." Freed from the darkness of interstate flyovers, this patch of land, now open to the sun and a view of the waters of Boston Bay, is dedicated to the memory of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Reynolds latest is "a tribute to Rose Kennedy, a woman who planted her own perennial garden."

Peter Reynolds is noted as the illustrator of the very popular Judy Moody series and his own books, among them the best-selling Someday, Ish, and The Dot. (Irma S and James H Black Honor for Excellence in Children's Literature (Awards))

Swan Boat Snapshots: Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey

I just returned from a trip to Boston with my granddaughter, where, like everyone who visits that beautiful city in summer, we had to take a ride in the Swan Boats in the Public Garden. Like a lot of the folks who do so, the idyllic scene made me feel as if I were a character in Robert McCloskey's Caldecott classic Make Way for Ducklings.

In case it's been a while since you heard or read this book, it tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard's search for the perfect place to hatch their eggs and raise their ducklings. Although they love the peanuts the passengers throw to them from the Swan Boats in the Public Garden, the park seems too busy and noisy for nesting. But when the ducklings hatch and grow big enough to follow, Mrs. Mallard firmly leads her brood, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack, back to the Public Garden, helped by a burly Irish cop who holds up traffic as they cross the busy streets of downtown Boston. There in the Public Garden they make their home on a small island, and Mr. and Mrs. Mallard teach the ducklings to follow the Swan Boats as they circle the Frog Pond each day.

It's a great story of loving parents and caring neighbors, and its duck's eye views of Boston, from the Charles River Basin to Louisburg Square to the little pagoda in the Public Garden pond, nostalgic even when the book was published, make anyone who has ever been there homesick for Boston all over again.

No American child should grow up without knowing this story. Even if he or she never actually takes a ride in those foot-powered Swan Boats, the child will know how they look, and how they will always look--to a duck.