“One summer morning, my husband, Joe, and I were dangling our feet from our dock on Goose Lake. I was watching some waterweeds on the bottom, thinking they looked just like a giant turtle. Suddenly, they swam up toward us. It was a turtle, a huge snapping one, with an underwater ‘garden’ on its shell.”

Author illustrator Jan Brett was inspired by the turtle with a garden on its back to write Mossy, the story of an eastern box turtle who also grows a garden on her carapace (shell). In the story Mossy the turtle becomes the showpiece of Dr. Carolina’s natural history museum, but Dr. Carolina’s niece, Tory, isn’t so sure that Mossy is happy in her museum habitat. Romance enters the picture when Mossy meets Scoot, a handsome male turtle with ruby-red eyes. But will Mossy be able to get back to Lilypad Pond where Scoot is pining for her?

The book is laid out in Jan Brett’s signature style with lush, colorful illustrations in a central large page or two-page spread painting, framed by smaller pictures of minor characters and objects from the story. Mossy herself is a delightfully expressive turtle with a garden full of leaves and mushrooms and flowers and wild berries on her back. Her male counterpart, Scoot, doesn’t have a garden, but he is indeed a handsome turtle. The human characters–Dr. Carolina, Tory, and a couple of sisters named Flora and Fauna–are dressed in late nineteenth century/early twentieth century clothing to give the book a quaint old-fashioned feeling that goes along with the story very nicely.

Box turtles “generally live for 25-35 years but have been known to survive to over 100 years old,” according to my internet research. The author implies at the end of the book that Mossy. with her turtleback garden, might still be living near Lilypad Pond where she first appears in the story. I certainly hope so.

I’ve added this book to Picture Book Preschool under the heading of Reptiles and Fish. (Turtles are reptiles, right?) I have two other Jan Brett title listed in Picture Book Preschool: The Hat and Brett’s illustrated version of The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clark Moore. However, Ms. Brett is a prolific author and illustrator, and I have many of her books in my library. Do you have a favorite Jan Brett book? Tell us all about it in the comments.