Three Little Peas

Newcomer Rivoal, a French printmaker, creates b&w spreads that zoom in on growing plants with documentary immediacy. Blades of grass, radishes, drops of rain, and stalks of asparagus are outlined in heavy black, while their interiors are pale and ghostly; they look a bit like X-ray images. In the riotous chaos of a pea patch—whose stalks, leaves, and pods cram the left-hand page—“Two little peas pop out to get some air.” The two green spheres with smiley faces drop out of their pods and go exploring, avoiding a cat, perching in a worm-eaten apple, landing on the antennae of snails, and climbing delicate fern fronds: “Look! How did they get up there?” When threatened by a spider, praying mantis, and rodents, the two hurry underground (seen in cross-section, with a buried toy car and a mole in a tunnel); there they begin to grow. On the next page, they’ve created their own pea patch—and an offspring! Readers can spend long stretches of time inspecting the garden and identifying the plants and animals; an afterword provides details and photographs about the etching process Rivoal uses. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)