In this beautifully illustrated, wordless picture book, a little girl collects flowers growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk as she walks with her father. He is absorbed in the tasks at hand: talking on his cell phone and getting from here to there. She, on the other hand, is constantly looking, observing, and collecting. When she sees a dead bird, she takes one of the flowers from her bouquet and leaves it with the bird. leaves one of the flowers with it. Soon, she’s giving out her bouquet, one flower at a time, to the man asleep on a park bench, the dog who says hello, her mother, and so on. Regardless of whether the recipients notice her gift she continue to give.
Sydney Smith illustrates Jo Arno Lawson’s story with mostly black and white pen, ink and watercolor. He includes colored accents: her red coat, the yellow cabs, her flowers, multicolored jars. Still, black and white dominate the pages until she starts giving away her flowers. Then color starts to fill the pages. There's a lot of nuance to appreciate here: the location of the flowers (did you noticed the one page where someone is peeking at her through a window?), the people and activities and architecture that fill the streets, the way her father constantly has to wait for her to catch up, etc. Beautiful book.
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