cover image Bertha's Garden

Bertha's Garden

Elisabeth Dyjak. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $12.95 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-395-68715-4

To a ravenous rabbit bored with dandelions, Bertha's luxuriant vegetable garden seems ``a little corner of heaven!'' For one whole week the bunny enjoys his literal field days: ``Rainy Tuesday./ pitter patter/ hop, hop/ sniff/..../ Pluck a pea. Pluck a pea. / `Yummy!' '' Finally, on Saturday Bertha (not quite the ``fine lady'' Mr. Rabbit supposes) offers to serve him lunch-or rather, offers to serve him for lunch, in a development not unlike the plot of Chato's Kitchen (reviewed above). Wilkins's delicate pastel-toned watercolors, generally arranged as small vignettes against ample white space, suggest a wary edginess as well as the serenity that masks it, like an Easter egg filled with jumping beans. Her insouciant bunny, looking at times like an escapee from a Roald Dahl sketch, evinces a spare gracefulness. Dyjak's quirky storytelling, however, is less successful. Her frequently fragmented sentences, inverted word order and interspersed onomatopoeia at times produce a certain charm, but the overall effect is disjointed and may confuse younger readers. Pretty, playful and a bit puzzling. Ages 4-8. (Mar.)