Annemarie Riley Guertin

Starting with 1 messy park in need of care, on to the clean-up, and making compost, making and painting vegetable garden boxes to planting, all the way to 10 with a nice park and everyone sorting trash. WELL DONE!
The illustrations by Cory Reid are clear, imaginative, colorful, and informative and FUN.
Well suited for reading WITH someone of any age including ESL, and great for gifting to anyone, but especially to a school or your local public library!
I requested and received a free temporary e-book on Adobe Digital Editions from Familius via NetGalley. Thank you!
Available 16 Jul 2024… (mais)

American author Annemarie Riley Guertin and Spanish illustrator Helena Pérez García, who first collaborated on the lovely How the Finch Got His Colors, join forces again in this charming new picture-book project. When Little Redbird, looking forward to flying south for the winter, falls and injures her wing, she realizes that she must stay where she is for the season. Not knowing what to do, she appeals to the various trees of the forest for help, only to be rejected by the silver birch, the oak and the maple. It is the evergreens - the fir, the spruce and the juniper - who offer aid, and are repaid for their kindness by the Frost Queen, who forbids her son Jack from touching their leaves. They and they alone will keep their leaves year-round...

This pourquoi tale explaining the perpetual foliage of the evergreen trees is one I have come across before, and it seems to be quite widespread. There is a version of it that comes from the folk tradition of the Cherokee, although there the story concerns an injured sparrow and a pine tree. I am aware of at least one early version in print - "Why the Evergreen Trees Keep Their Leaves in Winter" - from folktale collector Florence Holbrook's 1902 collection, The Book of Nature Myths. This may be an adaptation of the Cherokee tale, although it's difficult to say, as Holbrook doesn't seem to have discussed her sources at all. Certainly, her version is quite close to that told by Guertin in Why Evergreens Keep Their Leaves. Given that this was so, I was really quite astonished not to find any reference to source material, or even an acknowledgement that this was not an original creation, anywhere in this book. My astonishment was all the greater since Guertin did acknowledge her source for her previous picture-book, which would seem to indicate that she was aware of her obligation to do so.

I enjoyed both the story and artwork in Why Evergreens Keep Their Leaves - no surprise, given my enjoyment of the first book by this author/illustrator team - and I might have given it a four-star rating, based on that alone. Unfortunately, the omission of any acknowledgement that this isn't Guertin's original creation (even if the specific retelling is) really grates, and merited an automatic one star deduction in rating. It's really quite puzzling to me that this happened, when it didn't with How the Finch Got His Colors. If one can get past that issue, this is a book I'd recommend to readers who enjoy folk and fairy-tales, and to anyone looking for children's stories about kindness.… (mais)

Opening in a primitive world in which everything is the color of dirt, clay and stone, this picture-book retelling of a Belgian folktale explains how color came to be in the world, and how the Gouldian Finch became one of the world's most colorful birds. After a deluge, Rainbow appears for the first time, bestowing her colors on the animals in the world beneath her. All the birds line up for their share, but when the little finch, last of all, finally gets his turn, there are no more colors. What's do be done? All his avian fellows sympathize, and Rainbow gives a little bit of each of their colors to him...

According to the brief afterword, first-time author Annemarie Riley Guertin used a story she found in Olive Beaupré Miller's 1921 collection, The Latchkey of My Bookhouse, as a source for How the Finch Got His Colors. Given that this is described as a Belgian folktale, one wonders whether the original was about the Gouldian Finch specifically, since this species is native to Northern Australia and New Guinea, or whether it concerned the European goldfinch. I'll have to track down the original and see. Leaving that (possible) adaptation aside, I enjoyed this retelling immensely, appreciating both the engaging text and the gorgeous artwork by Spanish illustrator Helena Pérez García. Appropriately enough, given the subject matter, the visuals here were stunning in their use of color. Recommended to all young folklore and fairy-tale lovers, and to anyone looking for pourquoi stories.… (mais)