Nana’s Garden Review

This is a sweet little book that does a great job of capturing the mood of a day with grandparents. For my kids, this one is something they can relate to, since Sunday afternoons are spent with their grandmas. (We split them up between my mom and my mother in law so neither is overwhelmed by the younger one’s current need to do literally every dangerous thing she can think of while the older one insists on meticulous projects that need supervision). I’m going to poke fun at my dad here on this one as well, because I love how it’s mainly just the grandma and the granddaughter, and then grandpa comes to interact for like a page before he’s off doing his own things again. This is highly accurate and makes me chuckle.

The sense of everyday adventure is so well expressed in these pages. Gardening is such a fun, hands on thing for kids (and adults) as there’s so much to discover and learn. Plus, dirt! Aside from just the overall feel, this is nice colors book. I like how they are incorporated within an overarching story, because it means that while I’m mainly reading this to the 1.5yr old, who is really into (and still very bad at) colors (every color is red), there’s enough going on that it can hold my 4yo’s attention at the same time. In fact, it’s a good one for her to pretend to read to her sister, with color on the words of the colors themselves as context clues to what the sentence says. And while this is most definitely more focused on the colors, I appreciate that counting flowers was snuck into the story to get a little counting practice in as well.

I also appreciate the artwork in this one. It’s super cute, but also just aesthetically pleasing. Lovely colors, great character art. Usually, I’m not a fan of faces on bugs if they aren’t talking, but for a little kid’s book I give it a pass because they fit well with the overall style and tone of the book.