Good Night, Garden Gnome

Children's Literature

The title words are the only text for this magical, or perhaps just imagined, tale of the nighttime exploits of this standard, rather ugly, garden decoration. As she pulls her wagon of dolls and stuffed toys to a tea-party, a little girl adds the gnome to the playtime. She also loses a teddy bear on the way. When night falls, the gnome gets busy with his gardening chores along with the defense of other creatures from predators. He also retrieves the lost bear, and even with all this activity manages to be back in place by morning. Full-page, naturalistic, detailed, intense watercolors create the narrative sequence. Each scene resembles a photograph freezing the action. Since the gnome's features never change, actions supply the emotion. The lack of urgency in the telling allows us to admire the care with which the artist has produced the detailed studies of animals and plants, along with the girl and her playtime. Readers can speculate about what really happened. 2001, Dial Books for Young Readers/Penguin Putnam, $15.99. Ages 3 to 6. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 1-A lush, bountiful garden is the setting for this almost wordless fantasy about the adventures of an ornamental statuette. With her dolls and stuffed animals in tow, a girl spies the gnome and adds him to her brood, but doesn't notice when a small bear tumbles from her red wagon. After an enjoyable day, the child replaces the lawn statue and takes her playthings home. At dusk, when the stars appear in the night sky, the gnome comes to life, tending the garden and caring for the animals that venture out after dark. Upon discovering the lost bear, he delivers him, at great risk, to the child's bedroom windowsill. Vivid watercolor illustrations, predominantly of intense greens, depict plush, velvety animals reminiscent of Jane Hissey's creatures, and lavish nature close-ups with every veined leaf and blade of grass clearly delineated. The pastoral scenes play host to a variety of wildlife, including birds, slugs, mice, rabbits, and an inquisitive caterpillar that appears in the majority of paintings. A magical tale of an enchanted garden.-Maryann H. Owen, Racine Public Library, WI Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

This essentially wordless ("Good night, Garden Gnome" is the full extent of text) picture book spices its simple flavor of fantasy with the ever-so-uneasy strangeness radiated by an ordinary garden gnome. The story opens with a young girl squiring her dolls and stuffed animals about the yard in a red wagon. One of the characters in the wagon is a garden gnome of the long-beard-and-Alpine-garb persuasion. It is his vacant stare that gives off the spooky edge, though he seems a jolly enough sort and no stiffer or less lifelike than the others. When it is time for the girl to go in for the night, she leaves the gnome outside, at which point he comes to life—eyes still vacant—to do his evening's work. Here he's much more accomplished than the creature she's dumped into the birdbath or dressed up in doll clothes. He's guarding the garden against slugs, helping to feed the rabbits and birds, warding off the cat, communing with the mice and turtles as the sun rises. Then he returns to the little girl one of the stuffed animals left behind the night before. There is even a little bit of adventure when a dog almost buries the gnome, but all comes out right in this gentle salute to the imagination, elegantly caught from the gnome's-eye view in the saturated colors of the evening. Who knew they had it in them? (Picture book. 3-5)