With an air of heartfelt contemplation, the picture book My Language Is a Garden presents a parent's lyrical ruminations on the gift of language as a way to share cultural heritage and express deep and forever love.
A parent asks their child, "Do you know my language?" The parent's language "roams" like the desert, is a "passage by the sea./ It's a jungle./ It's a forest, with every kind of tree." It "howls in the moonlight," and "beats across the plain." It "rumbles" like thunder and "patters" like rain. Each quatrain is placed with intentionality on a double-page spread of an abundant forest, a night sky lit by the crescent moon, or a vast desert featuring children making sandcastles. There are no borders containing this language as it "travels far and wide," gathering and storing "ancient knowledge" that nourishes its speakers. The parent promises the child that the very "words and phrases" of this language are "seeds to sow." If they care for the garden, it will bloom sweetly, binding their hearts together, always.
E.G. Alaraj (When Stars Arise) uses gentle but exact rhyme to convey a shared past, present, and future. She employs several poetic devices, including metaphor, simile, personification, and onomatopoeia, to create her profound yet playful appeal to treasure language as a gift. Rachel Wada's (We Carry the Sun) digital illustrations use jewel tones and watercolor textures to build specific landscapes from the poetic phrasing, creating realistic settings with as much energy as the fantastical. This celebration of language successfully imparts the sense of it as a living, breathing expression of love and belonging. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author