My nana's garden

Nana's garden is not arranged in orderly rows, but it is full of life, home to all kinds of animals and plants that spill wildly off the page. The narrator, a girl with brown skin and dark hair, arrives with her mother and takes off with Nana to pick apples and build a campfire. Successive pictures show the girl getting older and Nana becoming more frail, needing a cane for the walk to the garden, then later a wheelchair. While the text discusses the weather and seasons, the images convey a larger meaning. When winter comes, the garden is snow-covered, bare, and quiet. Its emptiness demonstrates that Nana is now gone. The girl and her mother mourn, but eventually, they plant Nana's seeds, and life returns. The girl brings her own child to the garden, and the cycle continues, with the girl finding kinship with her grandmother through the place they both loved. Life, loss, and rebirth are captured in this poignant, poetic, and ultimately upbeat tribute to the importance of family and connection.

A girl and her nana explore her garden together. Over the years, a little girl pays many visits to her nana's house and garden. Where the girl sees lots of weeds, her nana reframes it: "Wildflowers," she says: "food for the bees." They pick apples, sing in the rain, look at animal homes, and stargaze by firelight. As the seasons cycle, the girl and her mother continue to visit and, increasingly, to help her nana in the "lovely and wild" garden. Then one winter, Nana is gone, and the snow-filled garden and empty chair reflect the sad, quiet feelings the girl experiences. But even as the girl sits, forlorn, in the chair, a cross section shows two foxes snuggled in a burrow under the snow. And as winter turns to spring, the girl learns life goes on through honoring those we love and carrying on their work. There is so much beauty in this heartwarming story. Written in rhyming couplets, the simple text flows smoothly. The stunning, delicate illustrations fill in the gaps left by the text, depicting the charm of the garden, Nana's aging, the family's emotions, and the girl's growth. The artwork provides a wonderful display of three--and then four--generations and the love they share. The girl and mother have brown skin and long, black hair while Nana has paler brown skin and white hair. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.8-by-18.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 60.4% of actual size.) A beautiful, touching story of a family's love and loss, the garden both metaphor and place of healing. (Picture book. 3-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.