Along with Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden by Christy Mandin, the picture book Prunella by Beth Ferry and illustrated by Claire Keane, has given me a new category for books I like: Plants that are Not Your Cute Fluffy Pretty Garden Variety.
The surface story is the same with both books: girls who love the spookier, odd, weird, dangers, spiky, thorny plants. They like them so much that they are isolated from their communities and peers. In both cases, the parent(s) encourage this individuality, even if they are not completely understanding the ins and outs of it., In Purnella we have the clever addition of a girl born with a purple thumb. Both her parents have green thumbs. But as she grows, nurturing her stingers and stinkers, she also grows more prickly herself. And it is not until another special child enters the picture that things start to change.
This is a delightful story that has some wonderfully wonderful illustrations. You can judge a book by its cover for them. They are colorful and cute, with a little edge to show venus fly traps and corpse flowers. The end pages have the list of plants you will find. And the colors are probably my favorite as sometimes details are a bit busy and get crowded. These colors make up for any detail issues just by popping off the page.
While I have had my issues with my own cactus, I am not the “pretty posy type of girl” myself (though I did get this lovely coral begonia hanging plant this summer). I like the prickly and oddball plants. And I love the unforeseen twist about one of the plants Prunella finds herself with at the end and I think this gal could teach me to make my brown thumb a bit more purple, too.