Children's Book Review: How Groundhog's Garden Grew

How Groundhog's Garden Grew
Written and illustrated by:  Lynne Cherry
Published by: The Blue Sky Press, 2003

from goodreads.com:
Little Groundhog learns how to plant and tend to his own food garden through every season in this beautifully-illustrated, thoroughly researched picture book by naturalist Lynne Cherry.

Little Groundhog, in trouble for stealing from his friends' gardens, is taught by Squirrel to grow his very own. From seed-gathering to planting, harvesting, and eating home-grown fruits and vegetables, children join Little Groundhog in learning about the gardening process. At the end, Little Groundhog invites his animal friends to a Thanksgiving harvest feast.

Beautiful illustrations and thorough research on plants and insects make this sweet story an engrossing read, as well as a great picture-book introduction to how plants grow. Children and schools can follow Groundhog's lessons.

* After Groundhog is caught stealing food from his friends' gardens Squirrel suggests that he grow his own.  When he tells her that he doesn't know how, Squirrel sets out to teach Groundhog how to grow his own food.  This is a great book to introduce kids to gardening and where food comes from.  In the book Squirrel and Groundhog collect seeds from various fruits and vegetables to dry out out so they could plant them in the spring.  The other day my daughter picked out some seeds from here kiwi and told me that she wanted to plant a kiwi tree!  I told her that I didn't think kiwi trees grew where we lived but we could try!  Not only was the story great but the illustrations are beautiful as well.  Most pages have a border that various seeds, fruits, vegetables, and insects drawn and labeled.   The author also includes an author's note at the end of the book where she describes her childhood experiences of gardening and includes resources to learn about gardening.  Although I haven't had very much success with gardening, it's been an annual spring tradition where my children help me pick out and plant various seeds.  We then move them into containers to put on our deck (since our yard isn't really big enough to have a garden).  I thought that this was a great book about gardening to share with them!

Family Rating:  2 thumbs up!