Poetry Box
Poetry Box review:
Posted: Monday Jun 19, 2023
Tulip and Sprout by Emma Wood & Carla Martell
Tulip's best friend is a spud named Doug - oh and boy named Max whose best friend is a rock named Susan. Playing together involves a lot of exploring, discovering, hanging and sliding, hiding and coding. But then catastrophe! Doug the spud goes missing. To make matters worse Max and Susan have headed off on holiday.
Tulip is feeling as sad as the saddest sack, as bored as can be, so her dad decides to cheer her up with a jungle expedition. Which is exactly the right choice when you like swinging and climbing, investigating and discovering.
Ah! What fun this book is! It is a story of missing things, and yes missing is a pun. What do you do when your best friend Doug is missing and you miss him? The title of the book is a clue because the mysterious "Sprout" has to show up!
The illustrations are possibly the most JOY-RICH illustrations I have seen in ages. The colours pop and sparkle, the faces grin with wonder and delight. So when you close the book, you're warm in your tummy with such a happy story and images. I found myself grinning with wonder and delight just like Tulip. Oh and Max is excellent at dancing with glee!
The writing is smooth like honey and serves the story perfectly.
This is a perfect book if you want to share comfort and glee, some ingenuity and persistence with hungry young readers. When I look out the window I can see my spud patches need some major work! But! I think I will just read this book one more time. And then check out the first one: Tulip and Doug: Friends for (almost) ever (Scholastic, 2020).
Emma Wood worked for ten years as a radio journalist and broadcaster, as well as many years in communications in Dunedin. Her skills are diverse, from penning scripts for national television advertising campaigns, pitching stories to the country’s top news producers, voicing cinema advertisements and producing radio documentaries. This is Emma Wood’s second book with Scholastic, her first book, Tulip and Doug: Friends for (almost) ever, was published in 2020.
Carla Martell is an illustrator and designer based in Auckland. All those years getting in trouble for doodling in class (usually animals with hats on) eventually paid off, as she is now illustrating children’s books, designing for animation and dreaming up new
multimedia projects. Most of Carla’s illustrations are drawn by hand (often in pen and ink) then digitally combined with handmade textures and typography. She’s a big fan of printmaking, writing words that go with pictures and turning her hand to making images move. She is also a licensed artist, creating designs for products such as gift wrap, greeting cards, wall art and homewares.