By Carson Ellis
A tiny green sprout pokes up, and a crowd of insects watches it grow, argue over it, and live a whole season around it, all in a made-up bug language you get to crack yourself.
Two damselflies notice a little green shoot pushing up out of the dirt. 'Du iz tak?' one asks the other, which you slowly realize means 'What is that?' And that's the last time the book explains anything, because every word from here is spoken in an invented insect language. But you can read it. The pictures tell you everything: the sprout grows taller, the bugs get curious, they fetch a ladder, they build a snug little fort inside the blossom, a spider strings a web, a bird swoops in, the seasons turn, the plant withers, and a new green shoot pokes up right where the first one started. Your child becomes the translator, sounding out 'furt' and 'unk scrivadelly' and figuring out exactly what the beetles are saying from the look on their faces.
It proves to a child that they can read a story without knowing a single one of the words, because the pictures carry the meaning and their own mind fills the rest. That's an empowering trick, and it makes the book a small marvel for a child learning English or a child who's decided reading is hard. Underneath the wordplay is a whole year in a garden, sprout to flower to fort to fading to fresh sprout, so a child also catches, almost without noticing, the quiet loop of the seasons.