WANDERMELON

Jacob Kramer & Yara Bamieh | Enchanted Lion Books, USA | 48pp | 9.5 x 11.5 inches

A vine is growing near Farmer Brown’s ditch. Soon enough, its tendrils reach through Farmer Purple’s pasture, across Francine Cranston’s parlor, around the local school, and all the way to the tippy top of the tallest slide in Franklin Flume’s Water Park. And that’s where a watermelon begins to grow and grow and grow. Soon enough, the townspeople start to argue over who really owns the watermelon. “It eats my compost!” “It sunbathes on my porch!” “It drinks my birdbath!” “Mine!Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!” But nobody thinks to ask the watermelon to whom it belongs. Just as the Runaway Gingerbread Man of prior times made clear, and as the townspeople will learn, not everything and everyone can be owned, and what we all share is the deep instinct to grow and live freely. From the author of Noodlephant and an internationally recognized botanical artist, this rollicking modern fable about humans, nature, self-determination . . . and one giant watermelon will take you on a journey of silly songs and big ideas that will leave you forever changed.

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