We Are a Garden
A Story of How Diversity Took Root in America
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
This lyrical and extremely timely picture book illuminates the many different migrants who have made their homes in North America through the centuries.
Long ago a strong wind blew. It blew people, like seeds, to a new land.
The wind blew in a girl and her clan, where herds of mammoths still wandered the frozen tundra. It later blew a boy and his family across frigid waters, and they spread across the new land. Over time, the wind continued to disperse newcomers from all directions. It blew in men who hoped to find gold, and slave ships, and immigrant families. And so it continued, for generations and generations. Here is a moving and tender picture book that beautifully examines centuries of North American history and its people.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Overly glossy metaphor undermines this narrative nonfiction explanation of how the U.S. became culturally and racially diverse. Peters employs a metaphor of wind, chronologically tracing human migration to the North American continent, from First Nations peoples ("Long ago a strong wind blew. It blew people, like seeds, to a new land") to contemporary immigrants ("The wind blows in a thirteen-year-old refugee who adjusts her head scarf... and declares she will be a doctor someday"). Tentler-Krylov contributes sweeping, vintage-inspired watercolors, though scenes aboard slave ships and portrayals of Chinese railroad workers feel racially insensitive, portraying stereotyped features. In this uneven effort, the metaphor elides historical context, lending an equivalent lens to voluntary emigration and forced migration: "it blew in a sailing ship carrying boys and men who hoped to find their fortune" is followed by "the wind blew in slave ship after slave ship" and "it blew in ships carrying families who were weary of hunger." Back matter includes a glossary, an author's note clarifying the groups portrayed, and a select bibliography. Ages 4–8.
