Mossy
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Who will help Mossy return home to Lilypad Pond?
Mossy, an amazing turtle with a gorgeous garden growing on her shell, loses her freedom when Dr. Carolina, a biologist, takes her to live in her Edwardian museum. Visitors flock to see Mossy, but it is Dr. Carolina's niece, Tory, who notices how sad Mossy is living in a viewing pavilion. She misses the outdoors and her friend, Scoot.
Dr. Carolina finds a way to keep the spirit of Mossy alive at the museum. She invites Flora and Fauna to paint Mossy's portrait. Then she and Tory take Mossy home, where Scoot is waiting for her.
Jan Brett fans will pore over the colorful paintings of Lilypad Pond and lush borders displaying wildflowers, ferns, butterflies and birds in contrast to elegant spreads of the museum filled with visitors in stylish Edwardian dress and exquisite borders of shells, rocks, crystals and birds' eggs.
MOSSY gives readers a fascinating look at nature in the wild and on display in a natural history museum.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brett (Home for Christmas) again lavishes attention on the delights and eccentricities of the natural world in this quiet, idiosyncratic addition to her canon of meticulously rendered picture books. Set in the Edwardian era, the story centers on Mossy, a turtle who lives in a pond-side habitat and has moss, ferns, and wildflowers growing from her carapace. Just after Mossy meets and becomes enamored of a turtle named Scoot, a museum curator, Dr. Carolina, brings Mossy indoors to live in a "viewing pavilion with plants, a reflecting pool and everything they thought a turtle would need." Though the turtle is carefully tended to and admired by museum visitors, Mossy misses her outdoor home and Scoot. In a contrived solution, two artists (improbably named Flora and Fauna) paint a portrait of Mossy to immortalize her in the museum before Dr. Carolina and her niece return her to the wild. Filled with beetles, shells, feathers, and other natural phenomena, Brett's signature intricate borders frame gorgeous gouache and watercolor spreads that include handsome period details and some visual surprises. An odd but lovely story. Ages 3 5.
