Growing Like Me

Everything in nature grows up—just like you and me!
It's springtime, and the local pond is bursting with new life. Shiny black pollywogs are growing into fat frogs, and baby robins hatch from pale blue eggs. The blackberry bushes are full of sweet, juicy berries, and new monarch butterflies emerge from their cocoons. Listen closely, and you can hear the cheeping ducklings announcing, "Spring is here!"
Anne Rockwell and Holly Keller, two beloved children's book creators, team up to celebrate this season of growth.

Explains how plants and animals of the meadow, woods, and pond grow and evolve, such as caterpillars changing into butterflies, eggs hatching into robins, and acorns becoming oaks.

Everything in nature grows up—just like you and me!
It's springtime, and the local pond is bursting with new life. Shiny black pollywogs are growing into fat frogs, and baby robins hatch from pale blue eggs. The blackberry bushes are full of sweet, juicy berries, and new monarch butterflies emerge from their cocoons. Listen closely, and you can hear the cheeping ducklings announcing, "Spring is here!"
Anne Rockwell and Holly Keller, two beloved children's book creators, team up to celebrate this season of growth.

Publishers Weekly

With appealing simplicity, Rockwell (Our Earth) spotlights changes in nature, as a barefoot boy observes the world around him, noting, "Everything is growing, just like me." The lyrical narrative presents examples of natural evolution: "Blue eggs, safe and warm in their nest... will hatch into robins that sing in the grass" and "A speckled cloud with a fish standing guard... will soon be lots of shining silver fish, swimming round and round the pond." Keller's (A Bed Full of Cats) unadorned, boldly colored watercolor and pen-and-ink pictures bring these changes into crisp focus, alternating full-bleed scenarios with close-up shots that zoom in on a caterpillar, pollywogs and an acorn lying on fallen leaves. After viewing the acorn, readers flip the pageDand turn the book from a horizontal to a vertical positionDto see the boy swinging from the branches of a sprawling oak tree, as he entreats the acorn to "Sprout and spread roots! Stretch your green leaves up to the sky! Grow into a tall oak tree." The volume ends by bringing home an example close to readers: as the narrator addresses his cherubic baby brother, asking him what "will you grow up to be?" and responding, "One day you'll be a big boyDjust like me." An amiable introduction to natural growth. Ages 2-5. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

HOLLY KELLER has illustrated many popular science picture books, including Growing Like Me by Anne Rockwell and Air Is All Around You by Franklyn M. Branley, as well as several previous Green Light Readers. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.