Reading Together: My Garden
Friday, February 25, 2011
In effort to brighten up the drab and gray February day, we've been reading My Garden by Kevin Henkes. I've always been a fan of Henkes and when I first came across this book last year, LBD was merely a burgeoning bump in my belly. Nonetheless, I knew it would be a story I'd share with my daughter. The book is of a girl helping her mother in her garden, daydreaming about a garden of her very own. A garden unlike any ordinary garden. Naturally, when I read this book 7-months pregnant, I began do a bit of daydreaming of my own. Of working in a garden, a little girl next to me, digging in a plot of dirt for her own musing. What would we be planting? Snapdragons and climbing cucumbers? Arugula? Sunflowers? And hollyhocks? What will she look like? What will she be like? What is her favorite color? Would we eat peanut butter banana sandwiches for lunch? Will I be a good mother? Will she love me?
As I read her this book, I think of that fictional day and that the answers to the majority of those questions are still unknown. She looks at me, blue, blue eyes and smiles. My heart grows. She can't say it, but this answer I know.
I couldn't pick one favorite line, so I picked couple:
"In my garden, the flowers could change color just by my thinking about it-- pink, blue, green, purple. Even patterns."
and
"At night, the morning glories would stay open, shining like stars, and the strawberries would glow like lanterns."
Looking forward to Keven Henkes' latest, Little White Rabbit.
Labels:
books ,
parenthood ,
Reading Things ,
reading together
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[...] have too many. A few favorites include My Garden by Kevin Henkes, An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton, Corduroy by Don Freeman, Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery, [...]
ReplyDelete[...] checked out this book a couple times this year and are obviously Kevin Henkes fans (see here and here). He’s found something very special with his illustration style that really speaks to [...]
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