Prairie Dog Song

Review
By Publishers Weekly

Roth and Trumbore, the team behind Parrots Over Puerto Rico and The Mangrove Tree, adapt the song “And the Green Grass Grew All Around” in an inspiring environmental comeback story. Early spreads introduce the prairie dogs, owls, bison, and eagles that made their home in the prairies of northern Mexico, until ranchers and farmers turned the grasslands to desert (“And over time/ Mesquite moved in,/ With the longest roots/ That you ever did see”). As locals attempt to restore the grasslands, supplemental paragraphs offer extensive information about the process and animals (as does a substantial afterword). Roth’s meticulously crafted collages create sweeping, gorgeously detailed panoramas of a delicate landscape in flux.