{"id":335,"date":"2012-07-31T05:28:45","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T05:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/?page_id=335"},"modified":"2013-09-19T11:49:33","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T15:49:33","slug":"little-sweet-potato","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/books\/little-sweet-potato\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Sweet Potato"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\nVisit publisher’s page<\/a>
\nBuy from RJ Julia Bookseller<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

ABOUT LITTLE SWEET POTATO<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Little Sweet Potato has lived peacefully in his garden patch until vibrations from a tractor shake him loose from his vine and toss him onto a road. Wondering how to get back home, he bravely rolls to another garden, occupied by resident carrots who wiggle \u201ctheir long orange bodies,\u201d call him \u201clumpy, dumpy, and\u2026bumpy\u201d and reject him. Little Sweet Potato resolutely continues to another patch, where handsome eggplants with satiny skin refuse him because of his \u201cdumpy, bumpy, and kinda lumpy\u201d appearance. At the next garden, flowers with \u201cvelvety blue and yellow faces\u201d shun Little Sweet Potato because he\u2019s a \u201clumpy, bumpy, dumpy vegetable.\u201d Following similar receptions from the grapes and squash, Little Sweet Potato is about to give up when he\u2019s welcomed into a garden teeming with all kinds of plants who praise his lumpy, dumpy, bumpy figure. Rendered in strong black outlines and bright colors, the comical illustrations track Little Sweet Potato\u2019s solitary roll across sequential double-page spreads. Cartoonlike, anthropomorphic veggies, fruits and flowers add humor with their hilarious expressions, ranging from haughty and scornful to enthusiastic and approving.<\/p>\n

A tale of rejection and acceptance with echoes of “The Ugly Duckling.” (Picture book. 4-7)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Accidently uprooted from his garden patch, a sweet potato is repeatedly excluded from other gardens before landing in just the right place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviews<\/span><\/h3>\n

HarperCollins Children’s Books<\/strong><\/p>\n

Little Sweet Potato<\/strong>
\nAmy Beth Bloom, illus. by Noah Z. Jones. HarperCollins\/Tegen, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-180439-7<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Like the bird in P.D. Eastman\u2019s classic Are You My Mother?, the vegetable hero of adult author Bloom\u2019s first children\u2019s book is also trying to get home\u2014and the world at large is even more hostile in this outing. When Little Sweet Potato is accidentally tossed out of his garden patch and into the road, he rolls along trying to find where he belongs. As he is rebuffed by eggplants, flowers, and squash that keep to their own kind (the carrots tell him he\u2019s \u201clumpy, dumpy, and\u2014we have to say it\u2014you\u2019re bumpy\u201d), he realizes that he \u201cdidn\u2019t know the world had such mean vegetation in it.\u201d Eventually, Little Sweet Potato finds a place where he fits in\u2014because everyone does; Jones\u2019s bold cartoons portray the vegetables, fruits, flowers, and fungi in Hodge-Podge Patch with wide eyes and manic grins. The ending has just enough drollery (\u201cIt\u2019s not all mulch and sunshine out there,\u201d says an eggplant) to leaven the story\u2019s didactic message about diversity. Ages 4\u20137. Agent: Jennifer Walsh, William Morris Endeavor. Illustrator\u2019s agent: Edward Necarsulmer IV, McIntosh & Otis. (Sept.)<\/div>\n
Reviewed on: 08\/10\/2012<\/em><\/div>\n

Click here to view\/download a PDF of the New York Times Book Review callout of Little Sweet Potato<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visit publisher’s page Buy from RJ Julia Bookseller ABOUT LITTLE SWEET POTATO Little Sweet Potato has lived peacefully in his garden patch until vibrations from a tractor shake him loose from his vine and toss him onto a road. Wondering how to get back home, he bravely rolls to another garden, occupied by resident carrots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/335\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amybloom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}