MS Review – Picture a Garden – middle school non fiction
Guide to Categories – review of books for older elementary-aged and middle school-aged children
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Book Title: Picture A Garden by Linda Hornberg
Category: Middle-Grade Non-Fiction (Ages 8-12), 160 pages
Genre: Children’s Non-Fiction.
Publisher: Peanut Butter Publishing
Publication Date: January 28, 2025.
Content Rating: G: Topics only include gardening and being outdoors.
What springs to mind when you hear the word GARDEN? Would it surprise you to learn that the world just outside your door is overflowing with art, science, humor, drama, intrigue, and colorful personalities? Nature has you surrounded. It’s time to come out with your hands gloved and your feet galoshed, ready to sow some spinach, pick a peony, mulch a maple, root a rose, graft a grape, stake a spruce, water a walnut, and hug a hemlock.
Set down your screens and take up your trowel.
Adventure awaits!
The stories inside this book are nearly all true. I have never actually seen a chorus line of worms decked out in feather boas, but I can guarantee that there are plenty of real-life larvae out there merrily chewing up the scenery. You can turn orange from eating too many carrots, and there really is a tiny plant island called a liverwart–although there probably are no tiny castaways living on it. Welcome to gardening for smarties. Never stop thinking, wondering, and digging, and you’ll never be bored. Have fun.
My MS Review
Hornberg, Linda. Picture a Garden. Seattle, WA: Peanut Butter Publishing, 2024.
Picture a Garden is a field guide – written like a journal. Linda Hornberg has stuffed a lot of information into this book.
The text appears to be handwritten. I found it to be very difficult to read. There is a lot of information on each page – making the pages very busy. I had my daughter, who is a 5th grade teacher, take a look at the book. Her comment was that her students with focus issues would struggle with reading this book.
The drawings in this book also appear to be hand drawn and look like the coloration was done with colored pencils.
The book does contain a lot of good information, it just wasn’t presented in a way that I found to be very accessible.
Because of my concerns with the way the information was presented, I encourage K-12 Christian school librarians to take a look at the book for themselves before making a purchasing decision. The content is appropriate for upper elementary and middle school students.
I received a complimentary copy of Picture a Garden. This is my honest review.
Linda Robin Hornberg grew up in New York, drawing endless paper dolls and adventure comics with her sisters, Brenda and Heidi. She also enjoyed collecting shiny mimosa seeds in little bottles, nibbling parsley from Mom’s tomato patch, sword fighting with Iris leaves and flipping cicadas back onto their feet. Her incessant doodling landed her at the Hartford Art School. She received her BFA in Printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Further formal studies led to classes in children’s illustration and certification in landscape horticulture.
Linda is a permanent transplant to Seattle, where she remains an enthusiastic gardener, insatiable reader, unapologetic punster, and incurable cat lady. Please do not offer her your strays.
connect with the author: website ~ facebook ~ instagram ~ goodreads
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