Description: What can you create with a little chalk and a big idea? As Emma uses her imagination to draw a beautiful flower garden with sidewalk chalk, a tiny ecosystem develops outside her door, with real-life flowers that bud and bloom!
Brief description: Sally Anne Garland grew up in a small town called Alness in the Highlands of Scotland. According to her parents, her first really good drawing, at the age of four, was a large mural in crayon on the sitting-room wall. She went on to study Illustration and Graphic Design at Edinburgh College of Art before settling in Glasgow, where she lives with her partner and their son. When she's not drawing or writing stories, she has fun reading books, watching movies, and going on walks.
Review Quotes:
An observant, nurturing child beautifies her cement yard.
Eager to attract birds, Emma, a tranquil, light-skinned child, tries drawing images of plants and flowers on the wall using sidewalk chalk-to no avail. But everything changes when she discovers a wobbling slab of cement. Her dad, who shares her skin tone and features, moves the slab to reveal soil, roots, and wriggling worms. Hope stirs beneath the cement as Emma tends to the soil, plants slowly grow, and her father removes more slabs of cement. The yard slowly blossoms, and Emma creates a feeder, a nest, and other items to attract birds...until her actions pay off. The outcome is less exciting than the journey, and while some readers won't be drawn in by this gentle story or its protagonist's humble goal, curious, quiet children will appreciate it and may enjoy engaging in a discussion about what plants need to grow and what happens when the seasons shift. Illustrations are anchored in the off-white cement, with engaging contrast as plants begin growing and pollinators and helpful creepy-crawlies-ants, spiders, and ladybugs-arrive. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
For the patient, the protagonist's world will be pleasing. (Picture book. 4-7)