Discovering Beauty with Janna Matthies, ‘Over in the Garden’

A podcast interview with Janna Matthies discussing Over in the Garden on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

In this heartwarming episode, we welcome author and music teacher Janna Matthies to discuss her delightful new picture book, Over in the Garden.

Janna shares how her lifelong connection to nature and music influenced this counting book celebrating community gardening and outdoor exploration. Drawing inspiration from the classic folk song Over in the Meadow, Janna’s rhythmic text combines with Tisha Lee’s vibrant illustrations to create a story perfect for spring reading. Listen as Janna treats us to a musical performance, singing verses from her book and revealing how her dual passions for teaching music and writing children’s literature inform her creative process.

From discussing her cancer journey and swimming practice to exploring the beauty that drives her work, this conversation highlights how picture books can inspire children to engage with nature and build community. Whether you’re a parent, educator, or garden enthusiast, you’ll find inspiration in Janna’s approach to crafting stories that celebrate the wonder of the outdoors.

Subscribe to The Growing Readers Podcast to ensure you never miss an episode celebrating the creators shaping young readers’ lives.

Listen to the Episode

Read the Transcript

Bianca Schulze Hi, Janna. Welcome to The Growing Readers Podcast, I know you’re a istener of the podcast and you’re always so generous with your lovely comments that you leave on our snippets when we share on social media. So I am so grateful for you and so excited to have you on the show.

Janna Matthies Thank you, Bianca. I love hearing your voice speaking to me personally this time. It’s such a pleasure.

Bianca Schulze Amazing. Well, I thought it would be fun if we started with some rapid-fire questions. Are you up for that?

Janna Matthies Yes.

Bianca Schulze Okay, ready?

Janna Matthies Ready.

Bianca Schulze Since your book is, it does have this beautiful spring gardening theme, we’re going to have some garden questions. So, a garden tool you can’t live without?

Janna Matthies Absolutely my hand trowel metal tipped hand trowel.

Bianca Schulze What is the most unexpected thing you think you found while digging in your garden?

Janna Matthies Well, I know sometimes people find really super cool things. I can’t think of anything really crazy, but we live in a house that’s about 100 years old. And it has been fun over time to run across chunks of charcoal. And I eventually put together in this one location that I was near the old coal chute. So a little historical. What do you call that? Anyway, I’ll just let that go.

Bianca Schulze I love it. All right. Well, what’s the most challenging plant you’ve tried to grow?

Janna Matthies Mm. Well, I have been trying to do a lot more seed starting these days, and I have admired the nearby Catholic churches. Verbena bonariensis, a lovely tall annual with airy long wands of purpley topped plants. And I stole some of their seeds at the end of the season. I mean, I just grabbed them right off the plants. There were so many tried to grow them and it did not work. So maybe that’s my lesson to acquire my seeds in a more legitimate way.

Bianca Schulze All right, let’s see, let’s just have an indoor moment. Indoor plants, friend or foe?

Janna Matthies Friend.

JBianca Schulze I have lots of indoor plants here, but the only reason they’re alive is because of my husband, so shout out to him.

Dream garden visitor, which animal or insect would be your dream garden visitor?

Janna Matthies I am always very excited to find a praying mantis. They are so handy with the little pests. And so what I find, especially the little brown crinkly sack growing at the end of the season, I know lots of tiny little babies will be joining us for the next season.

Bianca Schulze So fun. All right. Are you a morning or an evening gardener?

Janna Matthies Ooh, both. It really depends on the weather and my energy level. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze All right, compost, exciting or gross?

Janna Matthies Fantastically exciting.

Bianca Schulze Garden hat or no hat?

Janna Matthies A garden hat, yeah.

Bianca Schulze Okay, and if right now I said to you, you can only do some singing or weeding, which would you choose?

Janna Matthies Gosh, I like both. And I do both all the time in the garden and otherwise.

Bianca Schulze I guess you could do both together.

Janna Matthies Sure, have indeed.

Bianca Schulze Perfect. All right. Well, now let’s have some longer answers here. So a question which you’ve probably heard me ask plenty of other authors. What’s one thing you do in your day-to-day practices that you feel would be either the most surprising or the most relatable to listeners? So something that could possibly inspire others or just demonstrate that we’re all so similar.

Janna Matthies Yes. Well, I am not an athlete by any stretch, never have been, but I’ve discovered in my adult life that exercise is critical, especially to my creativity, to my mental health. So I became a swimmer maybe 20 years, well, 15 years ago, I guess, after breast cancer, I kept having my shoulder lock up and needing because of surgeries and things. So swimming was recommended.

And I had loved swimming as a child, especially in the ocean and things, but I became a swimmer. And I swim three days a week, 45 minutes a pop. And that time for me is critical. Physically, mentally, spiritually, I pray while I swim. I sing in my head to the rhythm of my breathing. I just thoroughly enjoy it.

It’s critical to me. And then I walk my dog every other day. So keeping that body moving is a very important part of my day that I think a lot of people can relate to, but swimming is my big love.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, I love that. And I have to ask, you’re healthy and everything’s fine health-wise with you?

Janna Matthies Yes, very, very. In fact, next week will be the 16 year anniversary of cancer freedom. So. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, well, I’m happy that that is your outcome. So I’m glad. Well, to be a writer, they say that you need to be a reader first. So was there a pivotal moment in which you considered yourself a reader? And it’s totally fine if you feel differently that you don’t need to be a reader before being a writer.

Janna Matthies No, I would have to agree that being a reader is critical to being a writer. So many of us begin with others reading to us, and I think that that counts as reading. Taking in the beauty of words, the magic of stories, the community experience of entering a book is just as much, I think, a part of reading as once you actually have the skill.

And then the whole world opens up and you can make all your choices about what you’re reading. So I remember my mom reading to me as a kid. My dad was the one who made up the stories and told those out of his head so that that was even a good part of it. I remember doing that thing that most little kids do in the pre-K and kindergartners who I work with now as a music teacher. They do this where they memorize texts and bring it to you. And, you know, I did that thing where I had memorized and

I think that counts as reading too. And I have pictures of myself reading to my dolls and my animals. So I can’t think of one distinct moment, but I know all of that preparation was critical to when I then could do it for myself.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, absolutely. And so when you’re writing yourself, what is it that drives you and guides you, like that tells you that you have to write books for children?

Janna Matthies I thought about this over the years when I’ve thought about mission and why I write. And for me, it all comes down to beauty. And I mean, like capital B beauty bigger than bigger than just the small bits that go into the things that draw our eye or our heart. But for me, I think when I experience a moment, typically for me, it’s it’s nature or in the fine arts or in relationships. Something that strikes me as beautiful moves me. I need to respond to it with words, with poetry, with a narrative. And then I love playing with words. And so then I think I just take it from there into the practical skill-based part of writing.

Beauty drives it for me. Beauty, I think, drives me in life. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, I love it. So would you say that you are naturally more of an optimist too? I feel like an optimist tends to look for the beauty in things.

Janna Matthies Yeah, you know, it’s kind of hard to say. I feel like I’m kind of right down the middle because I feel deeply troubled by the ugliness in life, the corruption, the pollution, the pain, the suffering. And I notice those things too, but I think that’s part of what propels me toward the beauty. As a person of faith, I believe that one day we will be rid of all of that mess.

And something is alive in me that just longs for that to be the truth now. So I have a lot of hope if that’s optimism. But there’s almost like this deep double-edged thing in there. So, I’m not like a blind optimist by any means.

Bianca Schulze Yeah. All right. Well, you are not a one hit wonder author. You have other really successful books. And last year you had two books come out. between Here We Come and My Towering Tree, which came out last year, and now your new book Over in the Garden, they all have this strong outdoor theme. So, what is it that draws you to writing specifically about nature for children?

Janna Matthies Well, I grew up with parents. My parents divorced when I was a baby, so my experiences with them were always separate. But both of them took us into nature all the time. We were members of the Audubon Society at home. My mom got us out of bed at like five in the morning. We put on our Bushnell binoculars. And I remember putting my hair back in a bandana, you know, against ticks, my tough skin, hand-me-down jeans from my brother.

And we would go out in the woods with other members of the Audubon Society and make noises and all kinds of things to draw the birds. And I loved the birds, but I was down on the ground level looking at the flowers, looking at the bugs. I collected bugs. So, I think all that time spent in nature was critical. My mom was also a gardener, so we participated with her in that from a young age.

I had a dear, dear uncle with like a hobby farm and spent a lot of time caring for his chickens and other things with him. And then with my dad, he was a big road trip guy and we would see, you know, we were taken to beautiful places out West Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon and the beach and nature preserves in California where he lived for a lot of my growing up.

So just a lot of time spent in nature, I think stirred that sense in me that I had to be out there, had to be a part of that. And again, it’s that beauty thing. There is just stunning beauty everywhere we turn. Even in a city, you find the sidewalk crack flowers, and I’m always drawn to those things.

Bianca Schulze Well, Over in the Garden combines counting, gardening, music and community. And all of those things together for me is such a great recipe for a picture book. So I know that it’s it’s kind of when you will talk more elegantly about this. But, I think the question I’m going to ask is, what inspired you to adapt the Over in the Meadow folk song?

Specifically for this gardening theme because it’s just so wonderfully written but I know that it stemmed from the song Over in the Meadow.

Janna Matthies Right. Yeah. So I have been looking for my garden book for years. What was I going to write? And speaking of cancer earlier, I have a book called The Goodbye Cancer Garden that was in print for 10 years and is no more. That was a gardening book. I wanted to use gardening, garden as a metaphor. But with my love of gardening, I wanted to have a book where I could really dig in, pardon the pun, to how fantastic gardening is for children, for humans. So I’ve been keeping my ears open. But I’m a music teacher for littles. Pre-K and kindergarten are my grade levels now. I have 10 classes of those kids who I get to share music with every week at an elementary school. And part of our pre-K curriculum includes the song, Over in the Meadow. We use a lot of folk songs, traditional folk songs.

I remember a writing friend talking about how she was wanting to adapt a different folk song to a story idea that she had. And in the weeks after that, just, what’s just sort of hit me upside the head. Why haven’t I realized I have this perfect song that would lend itself to gardening. Over in the Meadow already takes place in an outdoor setting and uses counting to count all the special creatures. So in Over in the Garden, I’m not just counting vegetables or flowers, but we’re counting shovels and compost bins and dogs and friends and all the clouds in the sky, all sorts of different things that are elements in the garden. And it just really worked.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, it really works. Since you’re both an author and a music teacher, your musical background obviously influences your approach to writing rhythmic picture books. So talk to me a little bit about how that really benefits you and helps you with coming to the story in that way. I mean, I…

I have an example for myself: In my picture book, Don’t Wake the Dragon, there’s one little sing-song part, and I happened to be in this critique group. It was a one-off, and I was sitting next to a music teacher, and she pointed out this one part where the rhythm wasn’t quite working, and it just made it so much better. So just.

Talk to me about how that musical background can actually help you with writing picture books.

Janna Matthies Yes, it absolutely does. And I’ve got to say, most of my picture books have been in verse in rhyme. Couple at the beginning were prose, but I try so hard to write in prose. I have several stories out my agent does on submission right now that are in prose. But what seems to really work for me and for those who’ve chosen to acquire my stories is is the rhyming verse.

So whenever a story comes out that way, I just go with it because I know it’s natural to me. is a, you know, people say not to, when you’re new, not to write in rhyme because it is so hard to do well. And I really feel like I can’t take a lot of credit for this, it just seems like this is just natural to me.

I started piano lessons when I was four and violin at eight and played those all the way through growing up and singing became a part of that and in high school and.

Sometimes you just have it, sometimes it’s just there. And other times you have to acquire the skill. And of course I have worked at being better at rhythm and rhyme and making sure things scan well. But I do feel like it’s just something that’s been in me since I was young.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, absolutely. So like I have a saying, not every book is for every child, but for every child there is a book. And I feel like that just goes for all humans, right? We all like different things. And I think everybody should explore the things that they like and the themes and the genres and whatnot. But there’s one genre that I never understand when someone says that they don’t like them when it comes to children’s books and it is rhyming books. There are people that are so against like they just they don’t like rhyming books at all and that is the only like genre. A rhyming picture book if we can call it a genre is like that’s I mean when you read those with kids and you read them out loud like they’re listening they’re hearing it’s teaching them about the language and sounds and

I just, mean, for me, they’re one of my favorites when I’m reading with the preschool age is a rhyming picture book. I I love them that much. my, Julia Donaldson is one of my favorites as well. And I, you know, I get there’s some really bad rhyming books and maybe it’s because of the ones that just aren’t written as well. but I have to say, cause I’m such a huge fan of Julia Donaldson.

Janna Matthies Yes, Agree

Bianca Schulze Reading Over in the Garden, like I love the rhythm of it. And I love the combinations of words and your rhyme isn’t driving the story. Like the narrative is already there and that the rhythm and the rhyme just happens to fit. So anyway, that was a lot of talking for me, but do you feel as passionate about rhyming books as I do?

Janna Matthies I do, but with a caveat, there are times when I read a rhyming book and it doesn’t feel poetic. It’s just, there was a person and this happened and that happened and that happened and now it rhymes. And then you turn the page and that, that, that. So for me, there needs to be a poetry. There needs to be some refrain. There needs to be some repetition. There needs to be something that gives it oomph beyond just a story that could have been told in prose, but someone tried to fit it into a rhyme scheme. So it has to make sense for the story. And yeah, and that could be all different. And I will say in the terms of this, in the case of this book over in the garden, because the song already gave me the rhythm, the beats that I needed to fit the words into and needing to use numbers. And I even tried to match some of the rhyme and sound as I first got started so that it evoked the original text. This was really a lot of fun because it’s almost like putting a puzzle together. And you have to work and work and work until you get it just right. And it’s hard work because you don’t want to be forcing anything. So sometimes you have to scrap the whole thing, not just a word. Sometimes when I edit or critique for people who are trying to write in rhyme, I will notice that they just want to fix that one word or those two words. And I’ll say, no, you have to scrap the whole thing. Find a whole new approach to come into that sentence or that idea or that phrase. So it is hard work. But I think it’s really fun because I do love to play with words. So when I find other books that I feel have done that really cleverly, in fact, another garden book that I love is by Pat, I never know how to say her name, Zitlo or Zitlo, Pat Zietlow Miller, In Our Garden is another wonderful community garden book. She does some wonderful things with refrain and with hyphenated words that, and she uses that method throughout where she might have an idea that is has two hyphens within it. But different, when different mechanisms are used like that to bring rhyming verse alive, I think it’s pure delight.

Bianca Schulze Yes, everything you just said. I love that with Over in the Garden, do you imagine readers singing the book or reading it? Because I feel like there’s going to be some people that just want to read it, and then there’s others that will just naturally want to sing it. But do you imagine it being read more or sung more?

And what tips would you give parents and teachers to make this a more musical reading experience?

Janna Matthies What a nice question. I’m sure both will happen because some people just aren’t comfortable singing. And of course, you have to be familiar with the song in order to pull off making it all the way through using the melody that the song has. What I will probably do is read through it first, which also gives kids a chance to become familiar. And there’s so much to focus on in the book.

Janna Matthies Tisha Lee, who has done the illustrations, made such adorable characters. And they’re so busy doing so many things. And her setting is just fully flush, lush with color and shape that I think kids are going to need to go through it several times. So I think in a story time, I will probably first read through it. And then the second time, pick up my guitar and…sing through it while somebody else holds the book or maybe while it’s projected on a screen behind. So I imagine that the book, well, kind of like a garden, I guess, the book and the story itself can kind of grow with readings into something different as things go along.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, beautiful. Well, then I’m not sure if this is too much of a request, but if you would share, like, I don’t know, one or two highlights, like favorite parts, and would you be willing to sing a snippet? And I don’t know if it’s easy to just pick up the guitar and sing a snippet for us or if you start from the beginning, like however you want to come into this. It would be so great to hear your favorite parts and to hear it how you hear it in your head.

Janna Matthies Yes. Well, my favorite parts really have to do with how the illustrations fit in. So maybe in terms of singing it for you. And I did bring my guitar in here just in case we had a chance to do this. But maybe what might be kind of interesting is if I sing the first verse of Over in the Meadow and then sing the first verse of Over in the Garden. Maybe I could sing a couple of verses of Over in the Garden, but it will allow you to see kind of the jump off and how well the original song lended itself to where this eventually went. So here it is.

[Janna plays guitar and sings]

And I’ll stop there.

Bianca Schulze You literally just made me cry. I’m like my glasses are fogging up. I don’t know if you can see that, but that was so beautiful. And maybe this is why I love rhyming books so much because I don’t know. It was your words. was your… I’m speechless. Anyway, that was beautiful. I’m like so glad that you shared it. And now I’m just trying to unfog my glasses.

Janna Matthies Thank you very much. Tears are always the highest compliment, right? For an artist, when we get to move somebody, I feel like we’ve come full circle.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, so beautiful. And now I just want the whole book, but we won’t because we want people to go and buy your book and read it and explore it for themselves. Well, I loved that. So. I feel like, well, first of all, you have such a beautiful voice, really, really, really pretty. So in terms of your favorite highlights, like just very specific moments in there, like what feels the most special to you.

Janna Matthies Well, I love one scene in the book. The number is four, I think. me open this up. I have the arcs aren’t out yet. I think I should be getting my author copies really, really soon because the book is out. well, you’re not going to be able to include this in the interview. Just I’ll just go back. OK, so I think one of my favorite spreads and part of the story. Because I can’t just look at the text, right? The magic of picture books is that synergy between the illustrations and the words. So I love number four.

Over in the garden on a fresh, earthy floor knelt a smudged little gardener with tomato plants, four. Grow, said the gardener. We grow, said the four. And their roots grew new shoots in the fresh, earthy floor.

And I love how Tisha Lee in her art gives us a cross section on the left side of the spread. We see the little girl putting those starter plants into the ground. But then on the right side of the page, we get to see this cross section of everything that’s going on in the earth from the top of the soil where the part that she dug into down to these different strata where you see different colors of dirt because the soil and the minerals and the rock content is changing. And then the best thing of all, there’s a squirrel tunnel and we get to see the squirrel running the full length of those four tomato plants that are put in a row. So I absolutely love that page.

There’s a greenhouse scene, which I also love the child in that page is peering out from behind what looked to be some huge house plants that probably only get taken out of the greenhouse in the warm months to go in the garden. And there’s some hyacinths that have been allowed to grow because it’s so warm and cozy in the greenhouse. That’s number five.

Bloom said the gardener, we bloom said the five and they bloomed and perfumed in a greenhouse a lot.

I have always wanted a beautiful greenhouse like when I watched Gardener’s World with my favorite gardener, Monty Don, and all of his team on BBC. And they have the most amazing greenhouses. And I have too tiny of a yard and a budget for such a thing. But I love that we have that in our book, this beautiful greenhouse. I love that when the community starts to come into it, we’re seeing each of these children and each of the new items that they bring to the book grow into a team. At the end, we have 10 little gardeners. So on page eight, or not page eight, but when we’re celebrating the number eight, we have a little girl who is trying to pick up a birdbath that has broken and carry it to the right space. And that goes

Over in the garden, not a moment too late. Called a stuck little gardener to her gardening friends eight. Help, cried the gardener. We help, cried the eight. And they helped and they yelped. Not a moment too late.

And the moment’s growing a little late because the rain is starting to come, which is something that you want in your garden after all, but they’re trying to make it out of the rain and time as they pick up all these things. So I love how the community comes in to this community garden book.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, I mean, it was such a beautiful dance between yours and Tisha Lee’s artwork. I loved the synergy between the two. I’m really glad that you brought up your favorite scene where you can see above ground and below ground. And then also, I love how it all comes together with the eight kids all, you know, I just.

It was so well done. And I really do love this book. It’s going to be such a great springtime storytime. I just hope so many people will pick this book up because, like I said, way up front, it’s got counting, it’s got rhythm, it’s got gardening, it’s encouraging kids to go outside. It’s got community, and we need community badly right now. So I I love how it all came together. So I have to ask you, what impact do you hope that your story is going to have on readers?

Janna Matthies Well, I agree with what you just said there, Bianca. I hope that it gets kids outside. I hope that all the energy and excitement that slowly takes birth from that first kid who goes into this messy overgrown garden in the spring and does her digging of the weeds all the way through to this teamwork that builds. And then at the very end, we see the kids and wordless spreads continuing this in the summer and continuing this in the fall. And you get the idea of the full cycle of the seasons. So I hope kids will feel that energy and excitement about working with the earth and about being in a garden. There’s really something in a garden for everybody. There’s science, there’s experiments, you know, with bugs and the plant cycles. There’s food to eat, there’s beauty to see and to be picked.

There are friends there if you’re looking for a social outlet. There are just so many aspects to being in a garden, especially a community effort like this book ends up showing. So yes, I hope it takes people out into the garden. And even better, if they end up singing while they’re there. I have a dear, dear neighbor who was one of my first garden influences when we moved into this house 22 years ago. I started our garden here now, all around, and I would hear her singing next door as she puttered around. She’s no longer with us, but a lot of her plants are in my garden and and I, you know, I sing as I weed and plant and like she does. So hopefully even a little of that will go on for kids who do this.

Bianca, because we talked about so many things and important things that it sounds like are dear to both of us. I guess just not just, but the way beauty can heap on top of beauty. You know, we have the beauty of words and then to that someone adds an interpretation with visual art to become a picture book. And then a child might be read that book by a loved one or by a teacher and then take it in their own lap and remember that experience and sing a little bit of that song or show a younger brother, a sister, or a friend what’s going on in that book. There’s just so much beauty to be had through books, and my favorite format is the picture book. So yeah, I guess that’s it. All that beauty.

Thank you, Bianca. Such a pleasure to get to meet face to face and talk about what we love, both of us.

Show Notes

Over in the Garden

Written by Janna Matthies

Illustrated by Tisha Lee

Ages 3+ | 32 Pages

Publisher: Doubleday Books for Young Readers | ISBN-13: 9780593809365

Publisher’s Book Summary: Gardening fans will swoon over this bright and gorgeous counting picture book based on the folk song “Over in the Meadow”—packed full of colorful plants, adorable gardeners, and the numbers one to ten.

Over in the garden, in the weeds, in the sun,
bent a brave little gardener with her little shovel ONE.

In this clever and lively remix of the children’s rhyme, little gardeners come together one by one to tend to a community garden. Young readers will enjoy scenes of digging, weeding, planting, composting, and harvesting, illustrated in lush, detailed scenes full of cozy outdoor joy. 

In additional to its gardening theme, it’s also a counting book, and your littlest readers will enjoy counting along from one to ten as all the gardeners come together for a celebration at the finale. There’s so much to love in this exquisite and educational book.

Buy the Book

About the Author

JANNA MATTHIES is a picture book author and early elementary music teacher in Indianapolis. Her books include Here We Come! (a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection), Two Is Enough, and The Goodbye Cancer Garden, which earned an School Library Journal starred review. When she’s not writing or making music, Janna can be found digging in the garden.

For more information, visit https://www.jannamatthies.com/