Blooming Buddies, In the Garden is a children’s book filled with watercolor paintings of flowers, and accompanying verses. Its major “selling point,” in my opinion, is the beautiful, colorful watercolor illustrations.

The accompanying text is verses — one to a page, it’s not really one cohesive plot or something, but individual verses — personifying the flowers and illustrating their friendships with one another.  The overall effect is a fanciful, fantasy “plant world” that will capture children’s imaginations.  (I suspect most boys might not like it as much as most girls, being all “flowery.”)

In subtle ways, many of the verses point to good manners and edifying social interaction.  Some of them are pretty straightforward.  Others are rather vague and “artsy” to my mind, and I don’t really “get” them.  That might just be me and my black-and-white thinking, though.  (I’m not really into having to “interpret” poetry; I prefer when it just says what it means, plainly.  But I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.)

Do I recommend this?  I don’t know; I can’t decide.  I certainly don’t not recommend it; there is nothing here that I can imagine anyone finding offensive.  The whimsical illustrations are definitely a draw.  But I am not super-inspired by the text, so I could take it or leave it.  Of course, your mileage may vary. 🙂

Disclosure: The author provided me with a copy of the book above to facilitate this review.  As always, all opinions are entirely my own.