Prunella tells the story of a young girl who develops a passion for unusual and often unloved plants, but struggles to find her place with other kids. Bestselling author Beth Ferry partners with artist Claire Keane to create a picture book with a color palette and style as unique as Prunella herself. From the cover through every page, the illustrations root Prunella in a lush but heavily shaded green space, populated by such “persnickety plants” as the obscure bladderwort, the better-known Venus flytrap or even the familiar yet hated poison ivy, with brief scientific descriptions accompanying drawings of each plant on the book’s endpapers. Readers are introduced to Prunella as an infant, child of two master gardeners and born with a purple—rather than the customary green—thumb. As she grows, her fascination with strange plants grows along with her, and though her parents “didn’t always understand Prunella’s choices . . . they completely understood her passion. And they fueled it!”
Though Prunella has the unconditional support of her family, making friends does not come easily for her, and she takes solace in her garden. Despite its comforts, she feels left out until the day her neighbor Oliver (and soon his sister Clem) arrives, which plants “a tiny, hopeful friend-shaped seed.” Ferry makes use of nature-related words to tell this sweet story of finding your place, noting the “bouquet of botanists” and the group of young scientists who “wormed their way into Prunella’s heart.” To bring this world fully to life, Keane draws on a varied set of visual tools, sometimes breaking the page into vertical or horizontal segments like soft-edged comics panels and other times spreading out across two pages with rich and exuberant drawings. Besides the plant life, Keane is especially skilled at rendering facial expressions, giving visual voice to each character even if they never speak. Couple Ferry’s clever wordplay with Keane’s detailed illustrations, and you’ve got a book that is sure to resonate with young readers, especially those who have ever felt they didn’t fit in.
