When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree

(Hardback)

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NOMINATED for Florida's Sunshine State Young Readers Award Junior list!

NOMINATED for the MD Black-Eyed Susan Award 2020-2021

Age range 3 & up

When Grandma gives you a lemon tree, definitely don't make a face! Care for the tree, and you might be surprised at how new things, and new ideas, bloom.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

In this imaginative take on that popular saying, a child is surprised (and disappointed) to receive a lemon tree from Grandma for her birthday. After all, she DID ask for a new gadget! But when she follows the narrator's careful and funny instructions, she discovers that the tree might be exactly what she wanted after all. This clever story, complete with a recipe for lemonade, celebrates the pleasures of patience, hard work, nature, community...and putting down the electronic devices just for a while.

'Rocha's colors and characters leap right off the page, encouraging readers to get out into the world and create life, beauty, and some great-tasting lemonade (recipe included). The community is diverse and urban, with no lack of personality and detail Charms from cover to cover.' Kirkus Starred Review

Reviews

"Gardening tips abound in this delightful guide to caring for a lemon tree. The unnamed protagonist has a carefully drawn-out list of acceptable electronics she wants for her birthday. But Grandma instead brings...gasp...a lemon tree. The second-person text covers appropriate and inappropriate reactions and then advises readers to accept the potted present politely and wait for Grandma to leave or take a nap. Then you definitely shouldn't: drop it from a bridge, send it aloft with balloons, or 'play ding dong ditch' with it (all illustrated with wry understatement). Instead, the narrator offers some incredibly important do's: put the fruit tree 'in a sunny spot' (the grassy verge between sidewalk and street), don't overwater it, and 'battle against intruders' who seem to come from all directions. After nearly a year of caring for her reluctantly received sapling, the protagonist joyously picks her lush lemons, and Grandma even returns to help make some fresh lemonade, the sale of which leads to more plants for her burgeoning garden. Rocha's colors and characters leap right off the page, encouraging readers to get out into the world and create life, beauty, and some great-tasting lemonade (recipe included). The community is diverse and urban, with no lack of personality and detail. The protagonist and Grandma are both black, she with black pigtail puffs and Grandma with a white poof of hair. Charms from cover to cover." --Kirkus (Starred review)

Author Bio

Jamie L. B. Deenihan is a teacher and picture book author who lives with her husband and two children in Suffield, Connecticut. When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree is her first picture book. Visit her online at jamiedeenihan.com. Lorraine Rocha studied illustration and animation and worked at Lucasfilm's VFX and animation studio Industrial Light & Magic, contributing to such films as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Ironman. She is the illustrator of Zebra on the Go by Jill Nogales (Peachtree). Lorraine lives with her husband and daughter in San Leandro, CA.