Little Pear Tree

by Rachel Williams, Jenny Bowers (Illustrator)

Overview

Watch as a tiny seed grows through the seasons into a fine pear tree in this beautifully presented first book from Jenny Bowers. This format showcases vibrant artwork with more than twenty-five flaps that you lift to discover creatures hidden in every scene. The charming text makes this the perfect interactive primer to a key scientific topic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763671266
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	04/22/2014
Pages:	12
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 11.50(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	2 - 5 Years

About the Author

Jenny Bowers is one-tenth of the U.K.-based illustration collective Peepshow. Her work all starts with a paintbrush and a tube of black paint. Her clients include AOL, Bloomingdales, Elle Decoration, the Guardian, Samsung, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Editorial Reviews

12/16/2013
Williams and Bowers use the growth of a pear tree as a lens to focus this quiet, atmospheric tour of the seasons. Over six scenes, a pear seed bursts from the ground, blossoms, and feeds and shelters various animals: “The moon and stars rise up above/ with winter now in sight./ The little pear tree, once a seed,/ is a home tonight.” The matte cardboard pages are well-suited to the flatness of Bowers’s digital collages, and several flaps on each page reveal animals, plants, and more. Lifting a magenta blossom uncovers a nest of pale blue eggs, while a seed hides behind a silhouetted seedpod in the final scene, suggesting a cycle that will begin again the following spring. Ages 2–5. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

An artful exploration of the seasons. ... This is a lovely poetic encounter in both word and image.
—Kirkus Reviews

[A] lovely oversize board book... First and foremost it is an art book, showcasing Bowers’s appealing graphic-, almost impressionistic, style paintings. ... This offering is as bright and ephemeral as a pear blossom.
—School Library Journal

Little Pear Tree is a gorgeous, eye-catching explosion of color that invites little hands to explore the seasons with an array of images and words tucked behind cleverly designed flaps. Young readers will enjoy searching for the next hidden gem and grown-ups will want to do it right along with them.
—The Huffington Post

From the Publisher

06/01/2014
PreS-K—Is this lovely oversize board book a concept book? A story? An interactive introduction to nature? Well, sort of. First and foremost it is an art book, showcasing Bowers's appealing graphic-, almost impressionistic, style paintings. In a mere six spreads, the book takes youngsters through the seasons and through the life cycle of a pear tree, from seedling to fully grown, fruit-bearing tree. Four or five flaps per spread introduce words and hidden naturalistic details, such as caterpillars, nests, spiders, and fawns. However, there is little sense of size or scale, which is potentially confusing. By the same token, the rhyming text offers little in the way of explanation or information. "As summer comes, the golden sun/ arise in the east./The little pear tree, filled with pride,/puts on its glorious feast." There is no time frame to indicate how long it takes for a little pear tree, "once a seed," to become "a home tonight" to birds and owls. This offering is as bright and ephemeral as a pear blossom.—Luann Toth, School Library Journal

School Library Journal

2014-03-17
An artful exploration of the seasons.Starting with winter, the gentle verse, composed of one abcb quatrain per page, describes a seed waiting to sprout. On the following pages, spring blossoms appear, summer brings fruit, autumn leaves fall, and finally, moon and stars illuminate the full-size tree on a winter night. The illustrations, which were created digitally but have a printlike look, are full-spread works in warm colors layered with organic shapes. Flowers, seeds, leaves, insects, birds, deer and other creatures appear between the images, and some of them are hidden behind leaf-, flower- and fruit-shaped flaps. On the verso of each flap, which may be too delicate for the youngest toddlers, a simple caption labels the revealed animal or object. The images are seamless whether the flaps are open or not. One of the cleverest reveals is a pear-shaped flap that shows the inside of the pear and its seeds in cross section.While not particularly accurate (if only pear trees really grew this fast), this is a lovely poetic encounter in both word and image. (Board book. 2-5)

Kirkus Reviews