Behold Our Magical Garden: Poems Fresh from a School Garden

by Allan Wolf, Daniel Duncan (Illustrator)

Overview

Witty and inspiring, Allan Wolf’s upbeat poems are poised to cultivate a new crop of gardeners, aided by Daniel Duncan’s bountiful illustrations.

In our garden, can you see?
A grand adventure? And it’s free!
A green delicious fantasy?
Behold our magical garden.

There’s a lot more to gardens than meets the eye! In this collection of buoyant poems filled with fun facts, young nature enthusiasts and budding gardeners are called on to help solve a mystery by the compost bin, join a Wild West–style standoff between some good bugs and a few bad ones, interview the sun to find out what happens when it drinks a glass of water, and learn the fancy names of plants to spice up dinner conversation. They’ll be spurred to grab their own gardening tools, drop in some seeds, encounter a few insects, gather fresh vegetables, and find a whole lot of magic. Allan Wolf’s playful poems and Daniel Duncan’s whimsically detailed, welcoming illustrations combine in a charming celebration of the many wonders and lessons to be learned from a school garden. For further inspiration, engaging notes on the poems and an author’s note on jotting down observations can be found in the back matter.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536204551
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	03/08/2022
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	10.19(w) x 11.63(h) x 0.38(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Allan Wolf is the author of many award-winning books for children and teens, including No Buddy Like a Book, The Day the Universe Exploded My Head, The Blood-Hungry Spleen and Other Poems About Our Parts, and The Blanket Where Violet Sits. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Daniel Duncan is the author-illustrator of the picture book South and the illustrator of The Purple Puffy Coat by Maribeth Boelts and Mr. Posey’s New Glasses by Ted Kooser. Daniel Duncan lives outside London.

Editorial Reviews

A school garden flourishes with the help of enthusiastic students in this idyllic poetry collection. . . . an ­enjoyable read, and one that will likely inspire young readers to grow their own gardens.
—School Library Journal

From the poetic mind of Allan Wolf comes a vast collection of poems fresh from the garden. Illustrated by Daniel Duncan, readers will go on a journey from germination to compost, learning along the way.
—Tiny Beans

Well tuned to cultivate a deeper appreciation for both poetry and the pleasures and rewards of planting.
—Kirkus Reviews

A bevy of delightful poems on every imaginable aspect of school gardening. . . The illustrator obviously absorbed each poem, because the pictures range from humorous to accurate biological renderings to lovely. Wolf has provided a teaching suggestion for each of the poems at the end of the book.
—Denton Record-Chronicle

This story-in-verse of a school garden from beginning to delicious end captures the joy of growth and creation.
—The Virginian Pilot

From the Publisher

04/01/2022

Gr 1–5—A school garden flourishes with the help of enthusiastic students in this idyllic poetry collection. The poems begin with a group of students planning and dreaming up a garden, and then soon seeing it to fruition. Each poem then covers a different aspect of the garden throughout the school year, showing the garden at different seasons and different points of the plants' lifespans. The final poem features the garden in winter, with the mantra "gardens come and go" and the garden barren and covered in snow. The poems vary in style, stanza, and rhyme scheme, and the text is whimsical. For the most part, the rhymes have a natural flow and cadence, many lending themselves well to read-alouds. Several of the poems contain informative tidbits related to gardening, including facts about plants, vegetables, and spices, as well as about insects and birds. The artwork is detailed, featuring soft lines and colors, and the characters are diverse, with cartoonlike designs. The back matter provides brief notes on each poem that teach readers about rhyme scheme, stanza, poem types, and personification. Unfortunately, the back matter doesn't follow up with more information on gardening itself, leaving readers to guess which parts of the more fanciful poems are fact and which parts are fiction. Despite this, the book remains an enjoyable read, and one that will likely inspire young readers to grow their own gardens. VERDICT A charming collection of poetry for budding gardeners. Recommended.—Laura J. Giunta

School Library Journal

2022-03-30
Poems celebrating small gardens and those who work them.

Wolf claims school visits as inspiration for this collection, but the gardens he writes about, and that Duncan depicts with fine attention to natural detail, could be planted in any small patch of ground: “A dash of freshly chopped-up chives / will make your salad come alive. / To make your salsa taste sublime, / just add cilantro every thyme.” Wolf gives the book a pedagogical slant with verses about Linnean names for common veggies and the uses of keeping a notebook of observations as well as an appendix pointing out instances of personification, concrete poetry, irony, rhyme schemes, and like study matter. Some verses are arranged for multiple voices or, like the hilarious “March of the Garden Volunteers” (“Rising from the compost bin, / volunteers are moving in”), choral reading. Seeds, songbirds, and even bugs get their says—“Avoid the use of pesticides! / Say no to insect homicides!”—on the way to one last wintry insight that “Gardens come and go! / Gardens come and go!” Racially diverse groups of children working in gardens and enjoying the harvest alternate with scenes of common flora and fauna throughout.

Well tuned to cultivate a deeper appreciation for both poetry and the pleasures and rewards of planting. (Illustrated poetry. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews