Review by New York Times Review
SPRING IS (ALMOST) HERE. It's time to be thinking about your garden, if you have one. Even if you don't, thinking about gardens - renewal, growth, wildness, creativity - has its own reward. As three new picture books with dramatically varied styles of illustration show, a garden is an idea that can be approached from starkly different directions. A garden can be art: sculpture made from greenery. So it is in "The Night Gardener," a debut written and illustrated by the brothers Terry and Eric Fan, set in a gray town where green things are happening. Every morning the townspeople discover that another large tree has been reshaped into magnificent topiary. The vivid animal figures spark delight in this grim place. Young William, who lives in an orphanage but is apparently free to come and go, happens one evening upon the Night Gardener, a mysterious old man with a walrus mustache who (because this is William's book, or his fantasy) engages the boy as apprentice. In a marathon night of climbing and clipping, a park becomes a menagerie of giant, leafy creatures. As the depressed town turns celebratory, illustrations that started out monochrome go full-color. Then, in a riveting sequence of spreads, a green vista of sculpted animáis - giraffe, emu, rhinoceros - turns autumn-colored and finally reverts to plain, bare-branched trees. The townspeople were never the same, says the text, and neither was William. The lesson: You don't have to live a dull life if you exercise your imagination. The message itself is none too new, or helpful. What's worth the admission in this book is in the illustrations. They use a realistic cross-hatched style that sits, if at times slightly awkwardly, halfway between traditional old engravings and the looser lines of more modern artists like Edward Ardizzone. Still, they achieve a lovely, luminous effect. Illustrator-authors often write themselves stories involving spectacular scenes of fantasy; it's understandable. Those scenes will be the lure for children, as the elaborate tree-animals are for William. Real topiary couldn't be created from trees like this, but illustrators can do things that horticulturists can't. The gardens in "Tokyo Digs a Garden," written by Jon-Erik Lappano, are about abandoning control, not exercising it. The world of young, quirkily named Tokyo begins without a garden. It's a cramped urban landscape in which tall buildings have eaten up all signs of nature. In a strangely archaic moment, a mysterious old woman gives the boy three wishing seeds. He lifts a brick and pokes them into the ground, and soon the city is engulfed in forests. Monkeys swing from trees and ruined roads turn to rivers where salmon jump. The result is a kind of Eden, but the buildings are still part of it. Tokyo's worried grandfather ponders, "What are we going to do?" "I think," Tokyo says, "that we will just have to get used to it." This moral, too, about living harmoniously with nature, is heavy-handed, and the explosive reforestation the book presents is alarming. But the text attempts some levity with Tokyo's ice-cream-craving cat, and the final picture also soothes a bit: a scene of a row of houses with colorful vegetation on roofs and balconies. "Gardens have to grow somewhere, after all," the narrator says. For a parable about wildness, Kellen Hatanaka's illustrations take an unlikely approach: They're elegant and midcentury modern, all bold, flat shapes, crisp edges and beautiful colors. Abstraction prevails, to the point where Hatanaka's stylized faces lack features like eyes and noses. But the pictures are also full of energy, popping colors and some sly humor, if you look. Little children's eyes may fill in the modernist blanks and see the sprawling richness implied in the text. Older children might well appreciate the sophisticated design. Adults who like artistic picture books should take to this one - I find it a thing of beauty. Beautiful in a very different way, "Stories From Bug Garden" comprises 11 tiny stories by Lisa Moser describing the lives of bugs in an abandoned plot of land - no mysterious old person in this book stirring up magical transformations. You can see from Gwen Millward's doodly cover drawing that the bugs in question will be winsome cuties and not those things that bite and swarm and ruin your plantings. This garden may be wild, but its function is recreational. There's a bee, a horsefly, a butterfly, a couple of ants, a worm and more, but they're really toddlers in a playground: They swing on a gate, try to get a peach down from a tree, float a makeshift boat on a pond. Compactly told in short lines, these pieces are part beginning-reader stories and part poetry. In spirit they remind me of Arnold Lobel's wonderful Frog and Toad books. I loved the nine-line-long episode in which Bee sits on a branch, watching clouds, rejecting the others' suggested activities. "What do you want to do, then?" they ask, allowing the final line to be "'Just be,' said Bee." The stories aren't all successful - some stray too far from reality (when friends gather to watch flowers explode into bloom, it's like fireworks, but flowers don't do that). Yet even when flawed, these tales carry a sense of purpose, of meaning more than what's apparent. At their best they feel like little puffs of wisdom. Millward's watercolor, ink and pencil drawings highlight the stories' whimsy; her google-eyed characters and obsessive, scribbly vegetation add up to a rousing expression of cheer. In the profusion of leaves and flowers, there's a missed opportunity to reward close viewers with amusing details, but maybe next time. It all looks great, anyway, particularly considering that her color palette consists largely of light greens and bright oranges, hues that standard printing inks can never reproduce with full vibrancy. While all three of these books celebrate the stirring of life in some way, they represent about the widest variety of garden experiences I can imagine. Put together, they spell out the true meaning of garden variety. PAUL O. ZELINSKY has illustrated many books for children and won the 1998 Caldecott Medal for his "Rapunzel."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 7, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
A boy named Tokyo, his parents, his grandfather, and Kevin the cat live in a little house surrounded by a big city, a city that has gobbled up all the flora and fauna that once graced the hillsides there. Now it's all steel and concrete until, one day, an elderly lady gives Tokyo three seeds. Carefully, he plants them in his bare backyard. To his amazement, the very next day, three wildflowers are already growing. Soon more and more plants grow, quickly overrunning the city. Within days, it's become completely wild. Not only are trees and plants growing but animals have returned and hydrants have burst, creating rivers. Nature has reclaimed the city. But is this too much of a good thing? Tokyo has the answer. It's simple: tall buildings have roofs, right? Lappano's gentle, slender story is nicely enhanced by Hatanaka's energetic, angular watercolor, collage, and ink drawings, which beautifully celebrate the natural world.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this haunting modern-day fairy tale from newcomer Lappano, nature, long pushed out of a city, pushes back. A boy named Tokyo lives with his parents, grandfather, and cat in a white house dwarfed by crammed-together buildings. Tokyo's grandfather remembers when the house "looked over hills and forest and meadows and streams," but "the city had eaten it all up. Cities had to eat something, after all." The story takes on a magical, fable-like quality after an elderly woman gives Tokyo three seeds that "will grow into whatever you wish." His wish recalls The World Without Us as wildflowers rapidly grow into moss, shrubs, and trees that overtake buildings, crack sidewalks, and bring wild animals to city streets. Hatanaka's crisp collages revel in the vivid colors and spiky shapes of the encroaching vegetation (besides Tokyo's family, humans are absent until the final spread), and while Lappano suggests the importance of balance, it's clear that humans are the ones with work to do. "I think," Tokyo says, looking out at a city remade by nature run rampant, "that we will just have to get used to it." Ages 3-7. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3-Young Tokyo lives with his mother, father, grandfather, and cat in a small house that his grandfather has lived in since childhood. When Grandfather was a boy, the house was on a hill surrounded by the beauty of nature. Now, the house is surrounded by the tall buildings of a city. One day, Tokyo is gifted three seeds, which he plants in a tiny space by the house. The very next day, there are wildflowers growing. The following morning, the city is overtaken with trees, shrubs, and flowers. Throughout the week, the garden grows so much and so many animals move in that it is difficult for the people of the city to go about their business. Grandfather suggests that Tokyo come up with a solution. His decision is one that he feels is best for all. This bright and colorful picture book inspires imaginative thinking. Readers will wonder what the three seeds could possibly produce and will be thrilled as they see the lush garden begin to grow. The illustrations, created digitally with watercolor, ink drawings, and collage, are big and blocky and could be used in and of themselves as an art lesson on the illusion of space through collage. The text is neither too simple nor too complex but just what is needed to relate this imaginative tale of environmentalism. VERDICT This title could be used in a wide variety of academic disciplines, including science, art, social studies, and language arts.-Amy Shepherd, St. Anne's Episcopal School, Middleton, DE © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
First-time writer Lappano and illustrator Hatanaka (Work, 2014; Drive, 2015) combine to envision a built world magically giving way to an almost out-of-control natural one. Tokyo, a small boy, lives in a small house in a crowded city with his parents, grandfather, and "a cat named Kevin." The house, his grandfather's childhood home, is, Little House-style, engulfed by the city, which had also "eaten up" the surrounding forests, meadows, streams, and animals. "Cities had to eat something, after all," observes the text fatalistically. One day an old woman rides by on a bike, pulling a cart full of dirt. She stops and directs Tokyo to plant the seeds she drops into his open, only somewhat-eager hand. They will "grow into whatever you wish." He plants the seeds in his barren backyard and wishes. Over the next days, green things sprout, flowers bloom, rivers flow, bison stamp, and more, until the city has been transformed into a wild garden. While the drama of burgeoning nature is affirming and visionary, it is a little scary too. Bright, collagelike, geometric, Japanese-inflected landscapes seem at once welcoming and hopeful and thrilling and unsettling. Tokyo and his grandfather, both pale-skinned, have no eyes, just round, blue-rimmed spectacles. While this fascinating tale pays a debt to Virginia Burton, it also gives off a strong whiff of dystopia: "Gardens have to grow somewhere, after all." A challenging 21st-century fable sure to spark discussions. (Picture book. 4-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
