A Gardener's Alphabet

Mary Azarian's woodcut prints are so beautiful, dreamy, and detailed. My children would stare at them for hours and I would also. We removed the pages of this book (which now could be copied for home use) and tacked them on the wall where they easily learned their alphabet in a very pleasant way.

This is a lovely book. The illustrations are beautifully done, the vocabulary is carefully chosen - and the illustrations make very clear the meaning of unusual words like "xeriscape", but there's not much you can do for x anyway. But, it's true. Every person in this book is white, and it really is a little weird. I don't live anywhere where I can consistently expect the people I meet to be white, so it would never occur to me to draw a whole book full of people of just that one race. I wonder where the author lives that it wouldn't occur to her to draw a more normal sample of the population. It's not a bad book, it's just - that sort of thing is very obvious, and kinda annoying.

Mary Azarian was inspired by her own garden and has used the perfect form of illustration - woodcuts - to bring to life the alphabet of a garden. The perspecives range from above and below the ground and show not only the joys but also hardships that come from creating a garden.The simple words and strong visuals will be great for children learning about the natural world, but is also a beautiful gift for the gardener or nature lover in your life.