Your Picks: Cactus Hotel

Happy Monday! Speaking of favorite books, this pick comes from my friend Eve (who incidentally has an excellent food blog, Garden of Eating where you can find everything from canning to making your own maple syrup).

Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson and illustrated by Megan Lloyd.  "I love the book Cactus Hotel both for its illustrations and for the story it tells of the life of a saguaro cactus from seed to grave and all the homes it provides for the other animals. It's a beautiful book (and my son loves it, too)."

This quote from the book is lovely: "On a hot, dry day in the desert, a bright-red fruit falls from a tall saguaro cactus. Plop. It splits apart on the sandy floor. Two thousand black seeds glisten in the sunlight."  Brenda Guiberson also has several other books including one about rain forest so her name is going right on our library list.

P.S. I am not familiar with the flora of Southwest so naturally I turned to Wikipedia. Saguaro is magestic and some plants live more than 150 years. Eve, thanks for recommendation!

You might also enjoy reading about children's books by Scandinavian authors - they are magical!