A young gardener has a distinct talent for macabre plants but struggles to find peer acceptance in Prunella, a ghoulishly goodhearted picture book by Beth Ferry (Swashby and the Sea), illustrated by Claire Keane (I Want 100 Dogs).
Prunella's green-thumbed master gardener parents stare at each other in shock when their baby brandishes her astonishing purple thumb. Prunella grows into a gap-toothed, tawny-skinned child with a deep affinity for flora with thorns, spines, spores, or carnivorous tendencies. Her parents completely understand her passion even if they don't share it, but other children feel "nervous and nauseated" facing a garden that "pinched and poked and reeked." Prunella's attempts to share her botanical joy backfire, and she becomes "prickly" and solitary as she grows older. When an earnest, younger Black boy appears at the garden fence to ask her help with his ailing Venus flytrap, Prunella grudgingly gives advice and a handful of moss. Soon the boy is back with his budding mycologist sister, then "a whole bouquet of botanists." The adoration the younger children develop for her garden opens Prunella's heart, and a final spread shows her surrounded by the youngsters, all equally purple-thumbed thanks to a thorny blackberry bush.
Ferry's warm-voiced text is filled with botanic metaphors while Keane's dusky, blue-smudged palette strikes a tone of blooming shadows without verging too far into gloominess. Front and back matter list and describe Prunella's favorite plants, making the book a strong recommendation for any blossoming purple-thumbed readers as well as children needing reassurance that whatever they love, someone else will love it--and them--too. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library