This is Rachna Gilmore’s second story about Gita. In Lights for Gita this young immigrant from India received a cold welcome to Canada when a sleet storm all but ruined her Divali, the Hindu festival of lights. Roses for Gita takes place the following summer. Gita is adapting to her new home now, but longs for a garden to help her remember her grandmother in India. Gita’s mother has promised a rosebush, but is preoccupied with university studies. So the hole Gita has made, deep and wide just as her Naniji advised, sits empty. Gita loves to look at the beautiful garden next door, but her elderly, nearsighted neighbour, Mr. Flinch, yells “Get away, boy,” whenever he sees her. When Gita hears him playing the fiddle in his garden one morning, she decides to try to make friends. The old man and young girl discover that their shared love of music and growing things easily negates differences in age and culture.

This is a lovely, gentle book. Gilmore is particularly adept at presenting subtle emotions. She writes with a fine intensity that, in less skilled hands, could easily degenerate into pathos, but never does. Gita’s longing for her grandmother is expressed in her desire to create a garden. When she is thwarted by her mother’s preoccupation, and kept from enjoying Mr. Flinch’s garden by his crabbiness, she overcomes those difficulties with an act of friendship. She is limited by her age, but she is not passive, and creates a happier life by reaching out, even when the possibility of rejection is strong.

Alice Priestley’s subdued illustrations suit the gentle tone of this book. She conveys the glory of Mr. Flinch’s garden, and her flowers are anatomically correct, right down to the Explorer rose. Roses for Gita is about the adjustment of one immigrant child, but it is also about the importance of beauty in life, and the ability of kindness to overcome isolation and fear.