Garden Day! by Candice Ransom, Illustrated by Erika Meza

Garden Day! by Candice Ransom,
illustrated by Erika Meza book cover

It’s spring! The perfect time for planting seeds and pulling weeds. A boy and a girl joyfully help their male grown up in the garden. Seeds are planted. Scarecrows made. Finally, the whole family, including mom, makes a visit to the local farm stand. 

You might recognize this family. They’ve been featured in other seasonally relevant Step into Reading titles by Ransom and Meza, including Snow Day!, Apple Picking Day!, Garden Day!, and Pumpkin Day! As with other titles in this series, the large font and ample white space are excellent. 

Let’s take a look at the words. Most words are single syllable, with just a few double syllable words thrown in (scarecrow, hungry, buzzing). There’s also the rhyming text to consider. Rhyming may help some readers predict the final word in a sentence, however the lack of word repetition may hinder readers by introducing too many new words without adequate support. 

Image from Garden Day! by Candice Ransom,
illustrated by Erika Meza

The rhyme scheme also causes some hiccups with sentence structure. Often times this means sacrificing full sentences in favor of sentence fragments that rhyme. Additionally, the use of em dashes could be confusing to some readers who may not be familiar with this punctuation mark. For instance this spread reads, “Water garden-- / and you too!” 

Image from Garden Day! by Candice Ransom, 
illustrated by Erika Meza

The through-line of the story -- planting and tending a garden -- holds up well until the penultimate page turn. Suddenly, the family is at a farm stand. Without any foreshadowing or relevance to the plot line, this abrupt change in location is quite jarring. 

Image from Garden Day! by Candice Ransom, 
illustrated by Erika Meza

All in all, this title, and indeed the whole series, is commendable for featuring all brown-skinned, dark-haired characters, however there’s less to praise when evaluating the elements necessary to support new readers. While I’m happy to have this book on my shelf to recommend, I would be surprised if this title is given any Geisel Award love this year.