Picture books about adults may not be natural lures for children, but Farmer Eva's Green Garden Life, from Jacqueline Briggs Martin's Food Heroes series, has an inspired angle: its unseen narrator sounds like an awestruck kid ("My friend Eva Sommaripa lives so close to the ocean she can smell the sea, so close to woods she can talk to trees"). There's plenty of cause for awe in this offering from illustrator Christy Hale (Our School Garden!) and author Martin, who has written about four other real-life food stars (including Roy Choi and Sandor Katz) for her series.
The narrator explains what happened: one day, Massachusetts resident Sommaripa was at the market when the sight and smell of strawberries and fresh tarragon piqued her interest in attempting an edible garden. So fecund was Sommaripa's eventual farm that she began to sell her greens to Boston chefs. The narrator distills Sommaripa's research on soil into kid-friendly dollops ("Here's how that works: Eva's plants use sunshine and water to make the sugars they need to grow") and describes typical workdays for Sommaripa and her staff, who lunch together and often pause to appreciate the farm's animal and insect life.
Throughout Farmer Eva's Green Garden Life, the finger-tempting collage art in subdued farm colors features plenty of children who can be seen rescuing salamanders, enjoying community-minded Sommaripa's annual Longest Day Summer Potluck, and so on. Several illustrations have the appearance of quilts, which suits the book's folksy-DIY spirit. Even the plant vignettes in the generous back matter look good enough to eat. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author