The Weedy Garden

Margaret Renkl invites readers to imagine themselves as different animals living among the thriving blooms… . Succinct text… results in a soothing read-aloud, with poetic, sensorial language brimming with vocabulary-boosting descriptors. The ‘slender green snake’ in a ‘glimmering world’ paints as vivid a picture as the splashy multi-media collaged art provided by Billy Renkl, the author’s brother. Bursting with primary colors, his deeply layered floral extravaganza pops… . Linger over this exquisite garden filled with earthly delights. — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Step into a garden. What might you find? Through lilting text and vividly colored collage illustrations, Margaret and Billy Renkl invite close attention, just as in their earlier work for adults. But this time, readers gain an intimacy with nature that is easy to miss when standing at adult height.” — BookPage (starred review)The natural world glows in these pages… this book pays attention to everything and reminds children to do the same. — School Library JournalRenkl’s arresting mixed-media and collage illustrations showcase a wide variety of plants, some sharp in lines and deep in color, others soft and muted, as though they could be peeled back to reveal more of this hidden world… . The rich evocative language paired with the second-person narration makes for a gentle read together experience or a transitional book for readers gaining confidence. — BooklistElegant. Immersive full-bleed spreads lend a diorama-like feel to jam-packed digital scenes that display vintage-looking species cut-outs and emphasize fauna’s natural camouflage. — Publishers Weekly

Margaret Renkl is the author of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, which won a 2024 Southern Book Prize and was a New York Times bestseller as well as Reese’s Book Club’s 100th pick. Her earlier titles include Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss (2019), which won the Reed Environmental Writing Award in 2020; and Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South (2021), which won both the Southern Book Prize and the PEN/Diamonstein–Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay in 2022. She also collaborated with her brother, Billy Renkl, on the picture book The Weedy Garden.

Renkl served as a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays focused on the natural world. She is the founding editor of Chapter 16, a daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee. A graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina, she lives in Nashville.

Billy Renkl is the illustrator of the picture book When You Breathe, written by Diana Farid, and The Weedy Garden, written by his sister, Margaret Renkl. He contributed extensive artwork to two novels by Margaret Renkl: Late Migrations and The Comfort of Crows. He teaches drawing and illustration at Austin Peay State University. His work as a fine artist has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions, including solo shows in New York, Nashville, Birmingham, and New Orleans. He lives in Clarksville, Tennessee.

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