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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

Autumn bulb plantings, winter seed catalog selections and early spring sproutings open an array of specific activities pictured within uniquely designed pages offering accurate details for family gardeners. A bright spectrum of flowers emerges from the pictured cross-sections of soil. The rainbow is recapitulated by cleverly sized final pages showing the artist's genius with color, line and shape as well as the glorious colors one garden might yield. (Ages 5-11)

CCBC Choices 1988 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1988. Used with permission.

From Publisher's Weekly

June 1, 2003
In a companion to Growing Vegetable Soup, Lois Ehlert's signature stylized shapes and flat, bright colors bring forth a bountiful garden in Planting a Rainbow. Die-cut pages featuring one color per spread play up this celebration of seeds sprouting into an array of blossoms that boast the colors of the rainbow.

From Publisher's Weekly

March 2, 1992
With her characteristically vibrant artwork, Ehlert depicts the planting of a family garden. Ages 3-7.

From School Library Journal

May 1, 1988
PreS-Gr 1 -Planting a Rainbow, a companion to Ehlert's Growing Vegetable Soup (HBJ, 1987), is a dazzling celebration of the colorful variety in a flower garden and the cyclical excitement of gardening. A young child relates in ten simple sentences the yearly cycle and process of planning, planting, and picking flowers in a garden. Mother and child plant bulbs in fall, order seeds from catalogs in winter, eagerly anticipate the first shoots of spring, select seedlings in summer, "and watch the rainbow grow," reveling in the opulence of color. The power of this book lies in the glowing brilliance and bold abstraction of the double-page collages. Ehlert combines simple, stylized shapes of flat, high intensity color into abstract yet readily identifiable images of plants and flowers while clearly and colorfully labeling each plant on an adjacent garden marker. Children will especially delight in the six pages of varying width depicting all the flowers of each color of the rainbow. A celebration of the garden, the power of shape and color, and the harmony of text and image in a picture book. Pamela Miller Ness, The Fenn School, Concord, Mass.

From Publisher's Weekly

April 11, 1988
Every fall "Mom and I plant a rainbow,'' by carefully placing bulbs in the gardenstiger lilies, yellow daffodils, blue hyacinth and purple iris, among others. And every winter they order seeds from catalogues for zinnias, daisies, marigolds and much more. The bulbs sprout in spring; seedlings are set out. Come summer, it's time to harvest the rainbow-colored crop. Despite a die-cut insert that relates the colors of the spectrum, this new title lacks the fresh approach to the natural cycle of planting, growth and reaping of Ehlert's Growing Vegetable Soup. While still welcome for its bursts of color and well-documented labeling of flowers, this book cannot add to the concept of gardening, precisely because its predecessor was so comprehensive. Ages 3-8.