An allegory about anger and selfishness, this picture book proves that soft words and love can move mountains. A little girl and her brother, walking to school each day, see a beautiful flower and stop to enjoy it. The little girl loves the flower and tells it how beautiful it is and how much she loves it. One day, the old man, who lives in the house with the flower, sees this through the window and shouts out for her not to talk to his flower ever again. Not liking being shouted at, the two children walk to school another way. The flower droops. Nothing the old, cross man does helps. Even his gardener can’t understand why the flower refuses to bloom. He tries talking to it, but all he tells it is how great he is, how important, how full of himself. Unsurprisingly, the flower continues to droop. What can he do? He finally tells himself that no one likes him and why is this so? The gardener (whom he’s been shouting at) finally tells him that the little girl is somehow responsible for keeping the flower happy. When the cross old man finds the little girl and asks what her secret is, she explains; he follows her advice and finds that he really does love the flower, whereupon it blooms again. There is an explosion of happiness in the neighbourhood when the cross old man becomes a happy, un-selfish sharer of his beautiful garden – and we see this in a double-page spread at the end of the book. Lovely story, lovely illustrations.