Blues Are Best! Sweet Pea Summer by Hazel Mitchell

MOM HAS TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL, SO DAD WAS TAKING ME TO GRANDPA AND GRANDMA'S HOUSE FOR SUMMER VACATION.

Strapped into the back seat, hugging her toy rabbit on her lap, the little girl shares snacks and sings with Dad, but she misses her mom more and more as the miles roll by. But in their pleasant little village Grandpa and Grandma welcome her warmly, and a litter of kittens play around her in her cozy bedroom.

And the next day, Grandpa proudly shows off his garden, one with carrots and lettuces coming along, but the girl is drawn straight to the fragrant sweet pea patch, especially the blue ones, the most beautiful of all. Grandpa suggests that if she cares for them well, she can enter them in the town Flower Show. He warns her gently that the blue ones are the hardest to raise. Every day she gently ties the new vines to the poles, pulls weeds, and waters them with Grandpa's secret flower formula. But one sunny morning there's a tragic scene.

ALL THE FLOWER BUDS HAD FALLEN OFF THE SWEET PEAS.

She looks for clues to the problem in Grandad's gardening book. She tries protecting them from chilly nights and shading them during sunny, hot days, and she waters them carefully from the watering can every day. But the new buds continue to fall off before they can bloom. Until one day when Grandpa is spraying his vegetables in the next patch, she gets sprinkled with the icy-cold water from his hose! Aha!

GRANDPA! STOP! STOP!

And with no more icy-cold showers, her sweet peas flourish, especially the blue ones, the prize-winning, only blue sweet peas in the village Flower Show. And that's not the only surprise at the flower show! Her parents are there!

I GAVE THE SWEET PEAS TO MOM!

It's a happy conclusion to Hazel Mitchell's Sweet Pea Summer (Candlewick, 2021), a sweet story of family solidarity with the kindness and gentle care that nurtures both a young child and fragile flowers together. Shown rather than told through author-illustrator Hazel Mitchell's homey pencil and water-color drawings, this lovely picture book portrays a warm and loving family working together to do what good families do, care for each other and their world.

The Garden That Keeps On Giving! The Ugly Garden by Grace Lin

IN THE SPRING I HELPED MY MOTHER START OUR GARDEN. IT WAS HARD WORK.

WHEN WE STOPPED TO REST, I SAW THAT THE NEIGHBORS WERE STARTING THEIR GARDENS, TOO.

But the neighbors get their gardens dug faster because they use big shovels. Ours are small.

And when the neighbors' seeds sprout, green leaves begin to show right away. When ours came up, the green things look like grass blades!

Soon the neighbors' gardens are beginning to bloom--with big flowers of all kinds of bright colors. They smell so fragrant that the bees buzz all around them.

OUR GARDEN WAS ALL DARK AND UGLY. I SAW ONLY BLACK AND GREEN-PURPLE VINES AND WRINKLED LEAVES. OUR VEGETABLES WERE BUMPY.

SOME WERE JUST PLAIN ICKY!

It's very sad.

But one day we pick our vegetables, and Mom works hard, peeling,  chopping, and dropping a mixture of them into a really big pot of water on the stove.

And it's not long before a delicious aroma is drifting out of the kitchen, all the way into the neighbors' yards. The neighbors begin to follow their noses to the kitchen door, bringing bunches of beautiful flowers to trade for some  of the soup. They all sit down and have an ugly vegetable soup party!

IT WAS THE BEST DINNER EVER!

It takes all kinds to make a world and all kinds of gardens to make people happy, in the award-winning Grace Lin's spring tale of two kinds of gardens, The Ugly Vegetables (Charlesbridge Books). Author-illustrator Lin's cheery story of garden envy is resolved in appreciation for all that the good earth gives us, edible and beautiful. Grace Lin is also the author of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

Bloomin' Bot Buddies! Norton and Alpha by Kristyna Litten

Norton was a collector. Battered wheels, rusty cogs, broken springs--they all found their way into Norton's collections.

But best of all were the things Norton didn't have a name for.

Norton is an automaton, a robot himself. So it's no surprise he goes for the techie mechanical stuff, the odder the better.

And one day he finds some that sparks his interest, something round with a coil of wire protruding at one end. He takes it back to his workshop and makes something different out of it. He calls his four-legged project Alpha.

Alpha becomes his constant companion, and Norton trains him to help search out more treasures in the trash--hula hoops, a wrench, a pipe--gems for a tinkerer robot.

But one day Norton and Alpha find something quite weird.

It's something red, sticking up out of the ground.

Norton didn't have a name for it, either.

It was unlike anything else they had ever seen before

With a bit of effort they plucked it from the ground... and set out on their way home.

But all of Norton's experiments fail to show what the strange red thing is. At last, stumped, Norton gives up and tosses it out of the window.

Bad weather follows, so Norton and Alpha stay in, catching up on chores around the workshop, But at last, a nice day comes, and they feel up for a treasure-collecting hunt. Norton oils all their moving parts, and the two venture outside.

And they see something else they have never seen before--colorful flowers everywhere, orange, pink, blue--just like the red thing Norton had thrown out! They were beautiful, Norton decided...

"... and that's all that really mattered."

In Kristyna Litten's new Norton and Alpha (Sterling, 2017), the author's two robots seem unlikely lovers of nature, but artist Litton changes their minds in a dazzling display of blooms which fill a four-page gatefold illustration that wins them over and entices them to pick enough to decorate their spartan quarters back home. Norton is a different sort of robot, but as Kirkus Reviews suggests, "[This is] "a quietly amusing fable that highlights the importance of nature in a mechanical world."

Color Me A Rainbow: Penguins Love Color by Sarah Aspinall

ONCE THERE WERE SIX LITTLE PENGUINS THAT LOVED COLORS.

And it's no wonder. Mama Penguin loves colorful flowers and has named her six chicks after her favorites.

TULIP, TIGER LILY, DANDELION, BLUEBELL, AND BROCCOLI!

(Yes. Broccoli is technically the edible flowering part of the plant!)

And not only that--each one has a matching color hat!

So one day the little penguins decide to paint Mama some surprise pictures of her favorite flowers. They pull out the paints and brushes and have at it, getting their paints all over themselves and the white ice and snow all around them. It's a mad muddle of messy colors. Mama Penguin loves her surprise portraits of her little penguins, but... she's still Mama:

"SIX LITTLE PENGUINS, YOU NEED A BATH!"

If anyone needs more color in their lives, it has to be penguins! They're black and white and live in a world of snow and ice!

And in Sarah Aspinall's new Penguins Love Colors (Scholastic Press, 2016), there's more than enough color to brighten up the Antarctic in Aspinall's eye-catching picture book, exceptional for its ebullient and enticing illustrations of penguin chicks wearing their color-coordinated little berets. It's a simple story with an effusive look at the captivating powers of contrast, with the flowery shades against black and white characters, as cute as they can be.

Deepest Regards! Rooting for You by Susan Hood

It's spring at last, and that means it's time to put out down under. Enough of this dozing in the deep, dark underneath.

At least, that's what everyone is telling a little green seed who, thus far, seems to be resting peacefully down there in the soil. Who knows what's lurking up there? Things that want to eat you, probably.

I'M NOT COMING OUT!

The little green seed knows that there hard knocks and challenges to putting down roots and putting up shoots. But everybody seems to expect it of him. And... it is a little, um, dull down there in the dark.

Okay. He tries a little root sprouting. So far so good.  Now for a green shoot out of the top of his head. (Whoa! That feels kinda weird!)  And then...

"YOUCH!"

He bonks his sprout on a big rock buried just above. That smarts! Suddenly a friendly earthworm pushes through and offers to be the little seed's life coach! "Hey, Buddy! I'll help you find your way!"

There are beetles and ants in tunnels down in the dirt, but they are actually pretty friendly. But what's that thing? Nobody said there'd be spiders under the ground! Suddenly the little seed sprout feels the need to move on--fast!

But... what might be lurking up there in the sunshine?

But all his new-found friends are rooting for him, and what else can he do but GROW!

"KEEP GOING, KEEP GROWING!" his booster club cries.

In for a penny, in for a pound, the little sprout thinks! Push harder!  And then, there's that final breakthrough!

"I DID IT!"

It's not easy getting to green, but once he's up in the atmosphere, up where the air is clear, there's so much to see and so much to do that the little sprout hardly notice that he's got it made in the shade.

He has BLOOMED!

Susan Hood's little seed story, Rooting for You (Hyperion Books, 2014), makes light of getting into the light, something every good little seed has to do, pointing out that all the world is truly rooting for seeds to make it into the limelight, As the little flower opens, butterflies and bees are there to meet and greet and all is sunny indeed. To underline its uplifting premise, the book is designed with an impressive vertical gatefold which shows the finished plant, above and below, from root to stamen. Matthew Cordell's faux naif illustrations, done in matte color and delicate black-line drawings, take a light-hearted look at the life cycle, with childlike drawings that make light of life changes while teaching a little lesson on plant life and just plain life itself. Bloomin' good!