Summer Reading Day 86: Hello everyone! Today we read The Boy Who Grew Flowers, written by Jen Wojtowicz and illustrated by Steve Adams! This is a sweet love story about being different, finding that special person who is different like you, and being strange and unique together. 

Rink is a little boy who comes from a family of loving, yet strange, people. Rink himself has his own peculiarity: every full moon, flowers grow all over his body. He is quiet and shy, and the other children at school avoid him because of this and his unusual family. One day, he meets Angelina, a new girl at school, someone who is curious and kind and has her own things that make her different. Rink decides to make a gesture of friendship, and finds that he and Angelina have more in common than either realized.

JJ really enjoyed this book! It was a lot longer than I had expected, perhaps even too long for most one-year-olds, but it managed to hold her attention for the duration of the book (even more impressive considering there were four other babies in the room at the time, too). The pictures were lovely and dreamlike, and the story is a lovely allegory for finding a person in life whose strangeness compliments your own. We really enjoyed it. Baby Bookworm approved!