Canada Reads author Jessica J. Lee to publish first picture book, A Garden Called Home — get a look now!
A Garden Called Home will be published on Feb. 6, 2024
Jessica J. Lee is a British Canadian Taiwanese writer and environmental historian. She is best known for her memoir, Turning and her genre-defying book Two Trees Make a Forest, which won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction in 2020.
Lee makes her picture book debut with A Garden Called Home. Check out the cover and interior art below.
In A Garden Called Home, a young girl travels alongside her mother to visit family in the country she emigrated from. When they arrive, she notices her mother is happy exploring the beautiful landscape she grew up in. She learns about the ài hāo, or mugwort, that is used to make dumplings, the mountains and all the plants and animals that inhabit them.
After their visit ends, the young girl is determined to show her mother that there is wonder to be found in the nature of their home too.
Featuring artwork by Vancouver-based Chinese Canadian artist Elaine Chen, the picture book resonates the immigrant experience through vibrant illustrations of nature that, "will always be wondrous and can be a place of comfort, wherever we are," Chen notes in an email to CBC Books.
The book's publisher, Tundra Books, called the book "warm-hearted and lush."
After writing Two Trees Make a Forest, Lee was inspired by the idea of certain plants which helped repair the foundations of mountains after landslides.
Lee said to CBC Books in an email, "I wanted to ask what would happen if a mother and daughter could, like the plants and the mountains, find a way to support one another and help one another grow into their new home. So as much as it is a story full of plants and environmental details, it's a story of vulnerability, learning, and love."
Two Trees Make a Forest was championed by singer-songwriter Scott Helman on Canada Reads in 2021. Lee is also set to release another nonfiction title on nature and identity called Dispersals in 2024.
A Garden Called Home is a picture book for ages 3-7 and will be published on Feb. 6, 2024.
