When Mae’s family moves to a new home, she wishes she could bring her garden with her. She’ll miss the apple trees, the daffodils, and chasing butterflies in the wavy grass. But there’s no room for a garden in the city. Or is there?
Mae’s story, gorgeously illustrated in watercolor, is a celebration of friendship, resilience in the face of change, and the magic of the natural world.
FLORETTE is absolutely stunning, with some of the loveliest illustrations I have ever seen in a picture book.
The storyline reminded me a great deal of Elly MacKay’s beautiful Butterfly Park, in which a child protagonist moves from the countryside to the grey, drab, dreary city, and manages to bring some colour and life into their surroundings. In FLORETTE, a little girl names Mae dreams of replacing the mountains of moving boxes in her city apartment with a lush garden, but everything she tries seems to fail. It isn’t until she passes a wondrous flower shop, the titular FLORETTE, that Mae finds a way to create her very own garden, filled with plants and friends.
Mae’s final garden actually reminded me very much of my own childhood homes, which, thanks to my plant-loving parents, were always urban oases filled to burst with greenery. I was also reminded of some of the incredible container gardens I’ve spotted on my trips to Japan. Most city-dwelling Japanese lack the sorts of backyards that many North Americans take for granted, but that doesn’t stop them from turning their small urban homes into lush garden wonderlands.
While I enjoyed Mae’s story of determination, the illustrations are absolutely the star of this show, taking a familiar story (moving to a new city, feeling lonely, missing home) and turning it into something truly beautiful.
I have to laugh a little when reading these kinds of books, though, which always seem to portray the city as a grey, drab and gloomy place, with the countryside coming across as an idyllic paradise. For life-long city slickers like myself, of course, the city is no such thing – it’s a vibrant, humming, colourful, lively world that we could never imagine leaving for the dull, boring countryside! In fact, many cities are absolutely bursting with green spaces – Tokyo, one of the world’s largest cities, is positively packed with parks, gardens, and green spaces to enjoy. It’s all a matter of perspective, but it does give me a chuckle.
FLORETTE is a lovely picture book about making the best of whatever life throws at you, and turning whatever space you find yourself in into a home. A beautiful book for city slickers and countryside dwellers alike!
FLORETTE
Hardcover, 40 pages
February 20, 2018 : Clarion Books
Source: Raincoast Books
THIS IS SO GORGEOUS and it sounds like an adorable story. *___*
SO SO PRETTY!!! <3