By Shawn Harris
BookPage Best Book of the Year
2023–2024 California Reads Teacher Recommended Books selection
2022–2023 Kentucky Bluegrass Award nominee
2024–2025 New York 3 Apples Young Reader's Book Award nominee
★ "With assurance and passion in his solo debut, Harris connects readers to the stirrings of life in all its forms." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
★ "[A]n invitation to pause and imagine the worlds around us and inside us." —BookPage, Starred Review
"[A] stunning tour de force." —The New York Times
"Have You Ever Seen a Flower?. . . a forthcoming picture book by Shawn Harris [features] illustrations so dazzling that their vibrancy hasn’t been seen since, well, the last picture book Mr. Harris illustrated, Colin Meloy’s double-espresso Everyone’s Awake. . . . From this book’s front cover we know we’re in for a blast of hue. . . 'Have you ever seen a flower?' we read. . . 'I mean really . . . seen a flower?' At this point both the reader and the child in the book are suffused in a giddy landscape of electric pinks, greens, purples and orange—eye-watering colors that, incredibly, seem to become more intense as the book goes on. Anyone who has ever stopped to marvel at a single flower will grasp what Mr. Harris is trying to do here: He wants children to look closely, and he wants to evoke the exquisite beauty of plants in bloom. . . [D]eliciously psychedelic. . ." —The Wall Street Journal
"Have you ever seen a book quite like this? Not likely." —The Horn Book
"A visual feast teeming with life." —Kirkus Reviews
"Creative, dazzling, and fearless . . ." —Booklist