Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
Year of publication: 1994
Before
going into the details about the context of the book, I would like to introduce
you to the title, author, illustration, and year of original publication of
this book. This book was written by Eve Bunting and published in 1994. Eve was
born December 19,1928 in Northern Ireland. She is phenomenal author; she exceeded
her poetry over 100 books for young age readers. The illustrations in this
books were done by Kathryn Hewitt, the reason why she likes to illustrate books
is because it is very entertaining and back in 1980’s she came up with an idea
to put her favorite things: books, painting, and writing together. She loved
drawing and writing but in high school is where she was encouraged and spent
over ten years studying and figuring out how to make money by doing what she
loves to do.
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting could be
described as a nature description and gardening, how children should spend time
with their fathers, and make moms happy. Also this book has a variety of words
that could be used to increase children’s vocabulary. Flower Garden starts
of with a little girl and her father going to the store to buy plants (flowers)
for their planned little window flower garden, which later became a surprise
birthday present for her mom.
My Analysis
According
to “10 quick Ways to Analyze” handout, the book shows only one lifestyle, urban
lifestyle. Second tool is that author highlights that all people are the same
and could be as happy and as sad. Eve Bunting tries to illustrate that everyone
has similar experiences at home, she also highlights their excitement because
she wants to show that no matter what skin color or culture people are, they
still have same things that excite them. Even though she tried to show cultural assimilation, she still highlighted the only life style in
this book, but we
could give her a credit for that because she used it with a huge purpose which
was to show others the normality that all people could be excited from
one situation despite their color and cultural differences. In some way this
book does follow the stereotype by representing only one urban lifestyle. The consequences
of the little girl’s behavior could be rewarded and set as an example to other
children, her behavior could be expressed as loving, caring daughter.
Also
father’s behavior could be a huge example to lots of fathers in our society,
because sometimes they tend to forget the family responsibilities behind their
jobs and life problems. As a parent, we have to know that our children are in need
of our time and attention. The language in this story is used very good because
even without an images these words draw a picture, also there are a lot of
names of color used as well as other words that could be new to children.
Through this book they can learn a lot more colors and how to apply words
description to draw a picture in their minds, without looking at the picture.
Every character that was represented to us in this story was heard, the point
of the story was seen through every character. The narrative and these pictures
say quite a bit about the race. Author shows how no matter what race, gender or
culture you are; you can still be happy and make others happy. The problem in
this story was lack of flowers for girl to make a present, so the answer to
this problem was a trip to the store with her father and purchasing everything
she needed to see that smile on her mother’s face. On the question if I would recommend
this book I would say “absolutely” because it shows how our children can become
closer to parents and at the same time make them happy. Teachers could use this
book for a class projects. For
example, mother’s day could be a great day for
children to create these kinds of gardeners for their moms. Also it is a great book for kindergartners use when
studying gardens, springtime, colors, flowers, following directions,
sequencing, and lots of possibilities.
Citation:
Bill Honig. 10 Quick Ways to Analyze. Sacramento: Bill Honig,
1998. Print.
Bunting, Eve. "Flower Garden." Google Books. Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 23 Mar. 2012. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.
Bunting, Eve, and Kathryn Hewitt. Flower Garden. San Diego:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1994. Print.
