A young boy (who happens to have two dads) wants sunflowers for his garden party, and sets off with his pet turtle to find them. “What do we know about sunflowers?” the text asks us. Several subsequent pages each explain one characteristic of a sunflower (it “is tall,” “has yellow petals,” “has a round center,” etc.), then show Miguel encountering a plant that has some similarities, but doesn’t quite match. The text gently highlights the comparisons. (An artichoke has petals, for example, but they are green, not yellow.)
After searching and searching, Miguel sits on top of a shed with his turtle, looking glum. Where could the sunflowers be? Young readers will enjoy finding them as they peek from the edge of the page. Finally, Miguel spots them, too, and stands among them in delight as the text recaps all of their characteristics, affirming that they match. In the final scene, Miguel and his dads have a garden party with several other children and snack on all of the fruits and vegetables mentioned earlier. A recipe at the end shows readers how to make Sunflower Seed Salad.
Miguel and his dads read as Latinx, with medium-brown skin, and Miguel’s friends on the final page have a variety of racial identities.
This is a delightful book for early STEM learning, showing readers how to be careful observers of nature. Miguel’s turtle is a silent but amusing companion on each page. The fact that Miguel has two dads is happily incidental to the tale.
The book is part of the publisher’s Where in the Garden? series (though the one other book in the series so far does not include LGBTQ representation).
