The Magic Garden, by Lemniscates, (March 2018, Walter Foster Jr.), $16.95, ISBN: 9781633225138
Recommended for readers 4-7
Just stepping outside on any given day can reveal magic: leaves changing color on the trees; the tiniest caterpillar eggs on a leaf, or a chrysalis opening to release a butterfly into the world. In The Magic Garden, a young girl named Chloe takes her garden for granted, until one day, it decides to get her attention: throughout the season, branches wave, birds weave nests and spiders weave webs, bees dance, and the cycle continues.
How often do we actually stop and notice what’s going on around us? The Magic Garden speaks to the ubiquitous of nature and to how we move within nature without seeing the wonder around us. Award-winning author, illustrator, and designer Lemniscates’ mixed media, collage, and digital artwork come together to bring a textured, colorful world to readers, and popular questions about nature at the end of the book – Why do fireflies glow? Why do bees dance? – make this an enticing read-aloud that works in a science setting as easily as it would in a storytime setting. It invites children to stop and look at the world around them and ask why. This is the perfect story to accompany a nature journal craft I’ve had pinned to my Pinterest boards for over a year now: read the story, let kids make their journals, and have them go out and fill them!
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