For while they are delightfully simple and expressive, aesthetically, the colour schemes used feel rather a bit off-putting and strange, with especially the fact that the harvested carrot ends up looking very pink being rather majorly and personally jarring (and no, I do not in any way despise the illustrations, I just know that on an entirely personal and visual level, I would enjoy Crocket Johnson's pictures of the little boy, his doubting family and the end result, the carrot, considerably more, if different colours than mostly browns and yellows were used and if the harvested vegetable looked like an actual carrot colour wise, looked bright orange and not so garishly pink).

Although I have most definitely enjoyed the main and fundamental messages presented in Ruth Krauss' classic picture book The Carrot Seed (and that although The Carrot Seed was first published over sixty years ago, in 1945, the concept of the little boy, the diminutive gardener, sticking to his proverbial guns, believing that his planted carrot seed will one day indeed become a carrot, no matter what the naysayers, no matter what his family claims to the contrary, is as important, as cheering and yes indeed as fresh now as it was then), I cannot really claim that Crocket Johnson's accompanying illustrations are all that much to my personal liking.

The carrot seed by ruth krauss