Young readers will gasp - there is a moment in this book when Linn makes a terrible mistake. Her grandfather has had an accident, and he is in hospital. Linn offers to care for his precious greenhouse garden. There is a hint in these words:
"Inside, in the greenhouse, Grandpa grew flowers and vegetables ... because they were inside, the delicate plants were protected from pests and bad weather."
Linn has taken her dog Flori to help with the garden but Flori is more interested in digging. He finds a way to dig under the wall of the greenhouse and escape into the garden. This means that something from outside can come in but Linn does not know this. When she arrives at the garden the next day it has been decimated by snails!
How can Linn tell her grandfather? He will be so disappointed. In the illustration above you can see part of the solution. Linn's friend Emi loves to paint. She paints a set of pictures showing the way the garden should look. Of course Linn still has to confess about the snails but luckily there is a happy ending because the digging by Flori has unearthed Grandpa's precious old watch that he thought was lost forever.
The last two pages of this book give readers some facts about snails. See inside this book here.
Young readers are sure to be fascinated by all the flower names mentioned in this book - marigolds, lupis dahlias, bellflowers, hostas, along with vegetables such as squash and kohlrabi.
The German title of this book is Im Garten mit Flori.
I met Sonja Danowski at a USBBY conference and ever since that time I have had several of her books on my wish list. Last week I decided to purchase a few books from my lists and one of them was this book which I so happy to add to my own bookshelves. I previously talked about Little Night Cat.
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