Seedfolks

Being honest, I have never heard of this book before I had read it. I didn’t really know what to think about it. All I knew is that it involved multiple people telling a story about a garden. From the back cover and the title, I wasn’t really excited to read the book. But when I began reading it, I couldn’t put the book down. Each of the thirteen characters told their own story of why they wanted to plant flowers or vegetables in this community garden. It was amazing to read in the story and visualize how a vacant lot could turn into a beautiful and magnificent garden. But besides talking about how the garden changed and grew, the book also focuses on how a diverse part of Cleveland became one because of this garden on Gibb Street. People who would never have talked to one another because they had differences in the way they look or where they are from, started to appreciate one another. 

I would love to use Seedfolks in my classroom one day. This book could be used perfectly to talk about people’s points of views and how to convey that in a story. It also could be used to talk about people’s differences and the diversity that surrounds us. Seedfolks is a great book to help discuss how people don’t get along and how people are judgmental towards each other. I would want to use it as a class book and have the students plant their own garden someone outside of the school. This book has a lot of life lessons that can be learned and it all started with a little girl and a hope to grow lima beans in memory of her dad. An activity that I would like my student to do is write a chapter that could be added to this book describing their life and what flower, plant, or vegetable they would have chosen to plant in the garden. It would be a nice way to bring this book full circle for the students. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and definitely plan on using it in my classroom one day.

Seedfolks

Author: Paul Fleischman

Year Published: 2004