Tall Order! Go Be Wonderful! by Donna Gephart

WHEN DAISY WAS BORN, DADDY HELD HER CLOSE AND WHISPERED, "GO BE WONDERFUL."

AND SHE WAS.

A challenge to be wonderful is a tall order. But Daisy did all the baby things well. She cried and slept and ate, and inevitably, she came through. . . .

SHE WENT POO.

She giggled when Daddy played Peek-A Boo--every time, until one day she was one year old, and mommy sang...

"GO BE WONDERFUL!"

She gave her dog, Mr. Bonkers, a ride in her new truck, and dressed him up in a funny party hat, and performed in the pot-and-pan band for the party goers. On her second birthday, she got smooched by grandparents and fed Mr. Bonkers, and refused to go to bed until. . .

. . . after six drinks of water and seven stories and a big sloppy kiss from Mr. Bonkers, who was all too willing to sleep with her, she went to sleep!

And to celebrate her third birthday she finally rose to the challenge and used the potty!

Her fourth birthday was a piece of cake. She raked leaves and jumped into them with Mr. Bonkers.

Daisy met all requirements, hitting all the right marks to be wonderful. And then it was time to start to school! Everyone in the family--her parents and grandparents, three uncles and her neighbor, Ms. Myrna-- were all there with the same expectation.

DAISY WASN'T SURE SHE'D BE WONDERFUL AT SCHOOL!

What if she didn't know where to put her lunchbox? What if nobody would be her friend? What if she was homesick for Mr. Bonkers and cried in front of everyone?

WHAT IF SHE GOT LOST ON HER WAY TO THE BATHROOM?

Being wonderful is a tall order, but Daisy is well on her way, even on the first day of school, in Donna Gephart's brand-new birthday girl book, Go Be Wonderful! (Holiday House, 2021). In this exuberant celebration of the good times, the wonders of early childhood, author Gephart's gentle narration and artist Francesca Chessa's bright illustrations show the wonders of growing up in a warm family and neighborhood setting that nurtures childhood to be as wonderful as they can be.

Growing Time: Zee Grows a Tree by Elizabeth Rusch

Growing up is hard to do!

On the same spring day that Zee emerges as a newborn, a new seedling Douglas fir emerges from its pot at Coopers' Christmas Tree Farm. Her parents name it "Zee's Tree."

 As her parents care for baby Zee day and night, they also take care to see that the baby tree gets the right nutrients, water, and temperature for it to thrive. As baby Zee gets big enough to get around on her own, the tiny fir, still inches short of a foot tall, is planted in the soil, and at first it grows below ground, putting down deep roots. Both grow, but Zee and her tree are a little shorter than most of the others of their age, but her father says...

"EVERYONE GROWS AT DIFFERENT RATES."

And Dad's right: during that summer Zee gets to big for her spring clothes and Zee's Tree grows a whole foot taller in a month--now taller that she is!

Zee gets all new clothes--school clothes--as she boards the Kindergarten bus, and her tree gets its first trimming, too. Soon Zee is a first grader and then it's time to lose some baby teeth. Her tree puts on new buds and begins to shoot up, too.

But late in spring, the rains stop and the tree's top branches grow brown in the drought. Zee waters her tree often, and following directions, spreads ice cubes around its roots to keep the soil cool.

"DON'T WORRY. I'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU!" SHE SAYS TO HER TREE.

In the fall she spreads mulch to keep the moisture in the ground around her tree, and come cold weather, she and Dad put up a windscreen to keep away the dry, ice-chilled winds of winter, and when her eighth birthday rolls around in the spring, Zee's Tree is sturdy and well again.

In fact, by late fall it is so tall and beautiful that Zee needs a ladder to put the star on top for its first year as an outdoor Christmas tree, in Elizabeth Rusch's newest, Zee Grows a Tree (Candlewick Press, 2021). With loving attention to care for a child and the cultivation of a young tree, this how-to story book, part fiction and part nonfiction, shows how a child transfers the love devoted to her nurture to the growth of her very own tree. In author Rusch's gentle text, the little fir tree grows and thrives along with its young arborist, shown in the soft but realistic artwork of Will Hillebrand, and bolstered by an index of tree-growing terms and a brief bibliography of books about the joy and skills of growing your own tree. Says School Library Journal, "... a brilliant combination of storytelling and factual information."

Shade and Hue: Blue by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

There are many a shade and hue of BLUE.

Baby blue.

The soft hue of a baby blue blanket where a puppy sleeps.

There is the blue of blueberries plunking into a bucket, the deep blue of a butterfly in high summer, and the many blues of a sea wave as it breaks on the shore.

In the boy's bed the boy and dog sleep through the deep blue of midnight. They slosh through the icy blue of a snowy twilight, fly a bright blue kite high against a soft blue sky, and run from the deep, angry blue of a summer storm cloud..

Old Blue as the dog, now aged, on his worn blue blanket, the True Blue of the boy as he cradles his old and sick dog, and the lonely blue, as his misses his dog, now gone.

And one bright day, there's a new dog to walk with him along the ocean's edge....

Laura Vaccaro Seeger's latest Caldecott Honor book, Blue (Roaring Brook, 2018), explores the range of feelings associated with the color blue, done beautifully in textured acrylic paintings, with die cuts on verso pages to lead the eye and mind to the following page, tracing the course of time itself--of the boy, growing up, and his dog, growing old, in the bit of time they share. A companion book to Seeger's Caldecott book, Green, this newest shows why the artist is a five-time award-winner. Her ability to meld image and color and word into meaning makes her one of the stars of the art of the picture book. "Though there is sorrow, it is followed by joy in this touching tribute to a heartwarming relationship that will engage readers of all ages," says School Library Journal's starred review.

From A Tiny Acorn.... As An Oak Tree Grows by G. Brian Karas

ON A SUNNY LATE SUMMER DAY, A YOUNG BOY PLANTED AN ACORN IN THE GROUND.

As the proverb goes, mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow. And when a pre-colonial Indian boy plants his acorn, he unknowingly chooses well, sending his influence down through the centuries.

On the sunny hillside, a little oak sapling grows and stretches up toward the light.

EACH FALL IT SHEDS ITS LEAVES AND EACH SPRING NEW ONES WILL GROW.

And as the oak tree grows, it changes the little world around it. Squirrels and birds make their homes there, and in time a settler comes and builds a small house nearby to enjoy the sun and the shade, the soil and the sight of the water sparkling below in the distance.

Time passes and the tree grows mighty, a giant in its own landscape. Below the hillside, farms, bridges, and piers appear to serve the ships that sail by and dock there. A bustling town develops, first with horse-pulled wagons, and then with trains, busy cars and trucks on the road. Tall-sailed ships yield to steamships and then sleek, fast pleasure boats as the bustling city grows. The little farm changes, too, as the little house is expanded to suit the styles of the times, and different children are born to build tree houses and dream in the oak's shade as they watch the passage of the ships and the passage of time.

And then a storm hits, a mighty storm, mightier than even the great oak itself, and a blast of lightning brings it down. Its mighty limbs and trunk are trucked away to be recycled into lumber and mulch, but one of its small acorns is left behind on the now-barren hill, ready to recycle itself, too.

ONCE AGAIN THE GROUND IS WARM AND WELCOME AS A NEW OAK TREE GROWS.

In his As an Oak Tree Grows (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014), noted artist G. Brian Karas juxtaposes the changes brought by time and human activity against the constancy of the natural world, represented by that icon of sturdy long life, the oak tree. There is an unspoken message that perhaps the natural world is also the driver of all that bustling building--the sunny hillside, the fertile soil, the waterway beyond that connects it all to the world--they, too, are what makes it all happen.

Karas' charming illustrations of children working and playing as time changes around them gives young readers an understanding of the sweep of time, a conception of the fact that where they live hasn't always been the same and will not always remain as they know it. Karas uses the same device of a central image remaining while all changes around it that Virginia Lee Burton used in her classic Caldecott book, The Little House. and his message is the same, that some things change and some things endure.

There are many ways this book can be used in a teaching setting--as a bit of American history or even as an introduction to a nature study unit on trees, for which the author contributes an appended "Some Facts About Oak Trees." As School Library Journal points out, "This fascinating time capsule will spark nature and history discussions.” But like Burton's seminal work, Karas' detailed illustrations and lyric narration have the power to take youngsters beyond their immersion in themselves and their own present and see their world from the broader perspective of the flow of time.

Makes you think, doesn't it? That's what great picture books do.