Rose's Garden by Peter H. Reynolds

The pictures in this book start out in all black and white. This sets up the scene for the fantasy world that the author is trying to create. It is so creative to have the girl travel around a tea pot instead of an ordinary boat or ship. She collected seeds on her journey and filled her teapot with them. She came along a large city and decides to go explore it. Instead, of showing her walking all over the city and showing all the wonderful things about the city, the author shows Rose's creativity by having her find an alley and dream of all the wonderful things that could become of that dark, dull place. Rose's patience and faith that the garden will someday grow is shown when Rose sits and waits through all the different season. It is so great to see that when others find out the Rose needs help with her garden, they come from all over to bring her a little bit of hope. This really shows how one small favor can spread and grow into a whole abundance of help. Soon, Rose's garden is completely filled with all different colors of paper flowers. I like that the author chose to only bring color in when the flowers appear. This is a good visual representation of how a little bit of hope can spread to form a whole garden. The overall message of the story is shown when the author says, "each flower had appeared around her because she believed". This is a great metaphor to teach children to have patience and stick to what they believe in and never give up. I love that so many different meaning and interpretations can come from this story.