We Are the Gardeners by Joanna Gaines and kids, Illustrated by Julianna Swaney is written for children aged 4-8, or first to second grade reading level and designated as children’s non-fiction. [Affiliate links for books via Amazon - see text above and image below.]
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The story details the beginnings of a garden from the perspective of the author’s children, starting with a humble fern and growing from there. There is a running theme of not giving up at the first sign of trouble--sometimes, frustrating though it is, you fail at doing something.
However, as in the sciences, failures show you how not to do something, so you have a higher rate of success in the future. If animals get into your garden, for example, you can take steps to fence off the area so that does not happen again, protecting both the plants and the animals involved. Some plants are highly poisonous or generally toxic to local animals--also something to take into account when planning to plant a garden.
That being said, this book very much feels like the narrative told by a family privileged enough to have ready access to plantable land, funds to purchase tools, plants, seeds, and soils, and time to dedicate to taking care of the space. While that is not necessarily bad, it does paint a sometimes unrealistic picture of a family deciding on, what seems like a whim, to plant a garden.
I will say, however that there is some valuable information in this book, discussing the ecology and biological diversity in the ecosystem the garden happens to exist within. Unfortunately, it is still divided into the “good, precious plants” and “evil resource-stealing weeds” which is a whole discussion we can get into at a later date.
Likewise, while animals do essentially demolish the garden, often when animals are seen in a garden space eating things humans have planted, it is because a) there is a limited food supply in their general habitat and the plants they come across are accessible, b) they have been cut off from their usual habitat and needed something to eat, or c) you are literally living in their habitat. That last one is especially prevalent in situations where properties, often higher-end ones, border wild spaces or regions that were once wild spaces.
I understand what the author means when needing to fence off the garden to keep animals out is described, however if the same detail was taken in showing the garden’s relationship to the surrounding ecosystem as was allotted to describing the children’s actions, it could likely have been better.
Furthermore, for a work that wants to be a picture book, it felt a bit more like an illustrated chapter book. While that is, again, not necessarily a bad thing, it was wordy and could likely have benefitted from editing. I genuinely wanted to like this more, but it felt like the story’s flow kept being disrupted.
Even as an adult who was engaged in the subject matter, my attention wasn’t entirely held. I can just imagine how it would be for the intended child audience. As an aside, I’d not realized until I was looking up the book’s information that the author is apparently famous in the house rehab/fixer-upper scene in Texas and on tv.
Overall, I would give the illustrations 5 stars and the text itself 3 stars.