Flower Girl

by Barbara Bottner, Laura Grier (Photographer)

Overview

Today my aunt Penny is getting married. And guess who her flower girl is…?

A wedding day is a time to celebrate love, friendship, and family. It’s also very exciting, especially if you’re lucky enough to be chosen as the flower girl! New York Times bestselling author Barbara Bottner and professional wedding photographer Laura Grier created this sweet, funny, and true-to-life story about a flower girl and her important job on her aunt’s wedding day. Flower Girl is brought to life by beautiful photographs. A perfect gift for a flower girl!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761461197
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	04/01/2012
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.70(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	AD480L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Author Barbara Bottner lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Miss Brooks Loves Books (and I don’t), An Annoying ABC, and Bootsie Barker Bites.

Photographer Laura Grier lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the owner of Beautiful Day Photography and Laura Grace Photography.

Editorial Reviews

A little girl is thrilled to be a flower girl in her aunt Penny's wedding. There are so many things she'll get to do. She'll have fancy shoes, a bouquet and flowers in her hair, and, best of all, she'll wear a lovely white dress just like the bride's. On the day of the wedding, she's nervous, but she reassures the ring bearer with a somewhat unappreciated good-luck kiss. Everything goes smoothly, and there's dancing and cake too. Bottner's slight, lighter-than-air tale, written in the simple first-person voice of the tiny heroine, takes its cue from the perennial obsession with weddings, princesses and the like. Grier's wedding-album photos neatly capture every moment of this little girl's special day. It's all very sweet and charming, and young girls who read it will probably sigh and wish for their own chance to be in a wedding. But there might be some uncomfortable caveats for the adults sharing it with them. It seems staged and contrived and too darn cute. The narrator has no name, although the bride, groom (this is a "traditional" wedding all the way) and ring bearer are all named. At the end, her only wish for happiness is to be a bride someday. A dream come true for little girls who love to dress up, but more than a bit too syrupy for some. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews

PreS-Gr 2—A little girl longs to be a flower girl ("All my friends have been flower girls"), and her dream finally comes true when her Aunt Penny is to be married. Brief text and glossy, full-color photographs taken at a real wedding at a golf club pay glorious tribute to all the requisite details of flower girl-dom: flowers in one's hair, beautiful bouquets, fancy shoes and dress, and a funny ring bearer named Henry (who rebuffs the flower girl's proffered good-luck kiss). The child enjoys her active role in the ceremony and clearly relishes the dancing and the cake at the elegant reception. The closing page portrays the dozing girl dreaming that "one day maybe I'll be a bride….And at my wedding, there will be a flower girl, too." From the vivid pink endpapers to the picture-perfect photographs, this paean to flower girls is a shorter and dreamier take on Jill Krementz's "A Very Young" series (Random) of photo-essays. The book is beautiful and well-intentioned but will doubtless find its most relevant audience as a gift book and be an additional purchase for a majority of libraries. Kevin Henkes's Lilly's Big Day (HarperCollins, 2006) is still hard to beat.—Kathleen Finn, St. Francis Xavier School, Winooski, VT

School Library Journal