My pollinator garden How I plant for bees, butterflies, beetles, and more

Teeming with information about pollinators and the plants they rely on, this softly illustrated guide offers a wealth of information for aspiring gardeners. Cosgrove's expressive, richly colorful artwork is stylized enough that it avoids looking like a field guide while still rendering plants, animals, and insects with enough identifying detail that they're easily recognizable. The text flits from pollinator to pollinator, spending lots of time on bees; refreshingly, Zwetchkenbaum showcases a wide variety of native bees, including green sweat bees and the tiny eight-spotted fairy bee. Each pollinator appears near its companion plant; hummingbirds, who see mostly red, hover near wild columbine, while flies attracted to the smell of rotting meat land on a red trillium. It's an easygoing, inviting presentation of an increasingly popular and essential topic in gardening; native plants and their pollinators are an essential part of sustainable ecological balance. Robust back matter elaborates on the wider concepts presented here and offers advice on caring for a pollinator garden. Important, fact-filled information in an appealingly pretty package.

A child's introduction to gardening for pollinators. Reserving the explicit introduction of concepts such as biodiversity and evolution for the brief author's note, Zwetchkenbaum builds the narrative atop them. The pollinators covered in the book and the blooms the creatures visit are all native to North America, mostly the Northeast. An orange-tipped wood digger sips from a white beardtongue blossom; a red trillium lures a cloud of fungus gnats with its carrion scent. For each creature-and-flower pair, the organisms' Latin names appear in italic type beneath their common names in easy-to-read labels. A simple narrative, presented in larger type and voiced by a Black-presenting, ponytailed child, also unfolds, often explaining the special relationship between the pollinator and flower in question: "Butterflies can…reach nectar in long flowers. They need a place to stand." Coupled with Cosgrove's brushy-textured illustrations, Zwetchkenbaum's straightforward prose will help children understand how the wild bergamot and the spicebush swallowtail are well suited to each other. Cosgrove's depictions are accurate enough to depict the principles but not so detailed that children will likely be able to identify, say, an unequal cellophane bee or a spring beauty miner bee in the wild. No matter; the bibliography includes both books and websites that support further exploration. These adult-oriented resources will encourage intergenerational engagement. A thorough index is evidence of this deceptively simple book's informational heft. Inspiration for both keen-eyed nature lovers and gardening families.(Informational picture book. 6-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.