Following The Night Walk and Our Fort, Marie Dorléans has found another way to use a picture book to promote the counterintuitive coziness of the great outdoors. In the glorious The Prickletrims Go Wild, translated from the French by Polly Lawson, a family learns that it's not just about stopping to smell the flowers: it's also about stepping aside and letting the flowers do their thing.
The Prickletrims--that's Mr. and Mrs. Prickletrim and daughter Suzette--"ADORED nature.... Just as long as it was well ordered and properly managed." One summer day, when Mr. and Mrs. Prickletrim's micromanaging of their gardener becomes unbearable ("They closely inspected every snip, prune and mow"), the man quits, pronouncing what sounds to the Prickletrims' ears like a curse: "Now, my beloved garden, grow and bloom as you wish, in beautiful abundance!" Untended, the Prickletrim garden goes berserk, and the senior Prickletrims do what they can to tame it, but to no avail. It takes Suzette's interpretation of birdsong--"It sounds like they're saying: Nature is beautiful, wild and free!"--to convince her parents to accept the new normal: a jungle of wonderfully chaotic blooms.
In her digitally tweaked graphite pencil art, Dorléans reserves color--hers is a summery palette, of course--for the book's gardens and greenery; the other black-lined images are largely color-free and heavily patterned, giving these illustrations the look of pristine coloring-book pages. Forewarning: young readers swept up in the spirit of The Prickletrims Go Wild may be inclined to pick up their crayons and go a little wild themselves. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author