Tops and Bottoms | A Best Picture Book Review

When Bear chooses the top half, Hare and his industrious family decide to plant carrots, radishes, and beets. Hare keeps the juicy vegetables from the bottom half, and Bear gets only the leafy greens from the top half. Indignant at being tricked, Bear demands that Hare replant the field and this time give him the bottom half. Hare cheerfully complies, this time planting lettuce, broccoli, and celery with his family's help, leaving only the bottom roots for Bear's half.

This time Bear is really upset, and demands a harvest of tops AND bottoms for himself. Hare again complies, this time planting corn and giving Bear the roots and leafy tops of the corn stalks, keeping the ears of corn (which grow, after all, in the middle) for himself.

Bear finally learns his lesson and begins to plant his own land, while Hare and Mrs. Hare open a roadside vegetable stand, make a killing selling their harvest from Bear's land, and finally are able to buy their own land for their own planting next year.

The Caldecott Medal is awarded each year to a children's picture book considered most worthy by the ALSC (Association for Library Science to Children), a division of the American Library Association. Each year one picture book wins the Caldecott Medal award, and two to four Caldecott Honor books are named as well. The Caldecott Medal was named in honor of Randolph Caldecott, a 19th-century illustrator from Great Britain.