The Lobels Build a Beautiful Garden

Arnold Lobel's books tend to be notable for their humor and their meticulously designed characters. In The Rose in My Garden, he writes a very different sort of story. Mostly, it isn't a story at all, merely a listing of elements, but these set the stage for a significant event that occurs at the end of the book. The Rose in My Garden is very much like The House That Jack Built.

On each page, we are introduced to a different component of this garden. The vast majority of the newcomers are flowers, though a few more mobile creatures crop up and cause a change in the sedate circumstances. The new elements extend outward from the rose and are given a spatial relationship with the last part of the garden to be introduced, while the previous elements are repeated with each new page. Additionally, aside from the bottom two lines on each page, the list turns into a series of couplets.

But it isn't the writing that draws the most attention here. While the inherent repetition in this style of book makes it easier for children to ingest the information that is presented, Anita Lobel's illustrations are what allow readers to actually see what the text is talking about. The pictures, too, are progressive, starting out with just a rose and winding up with a vibrant collection of plants.

With the exception of a couple of two-page spreads, we're treated to full-page full color on the right-hand side and only black and white in a small box on the left. Because the identification of the flowers is so wrapped up in their coloration, I'm not especially fond of the choice to use black and white to show the flowers in isolation, but I guess it forces us to focus on their form rather than their color. Usually this isn't too problematic, but some of the flowers do rather resemble each other if color is figured out of he equation.

I like the fact that this book builds not only to pages nearly filled with text and illustration, so different from the sparse opening pages, but to an actual event that involves all of the aspects of the garden. It makes for a clever, action-packed ending, which is a nice pay-off after so many semi-predictable pages.

The Rose in My Garden is an unusual book for Arnold Lobel, but with his wife's inspired illustrations, he delivers a satisfying entry in the time-honored genre of progressive tales.