Seedfolks

by Paul Fleischman

Seedfolks is a nice, 70-page children's book (are they called novels?), and I liked it. It would make a great read-aloud-and-talk-about book for bedtime; or a great book to read together in one of those parent-child reading groups; or a good present for a slightly older child; or even a nice story for a grown-up like me on a quiet evening. I don't have kids so I'm not good with their ages, but I'd guess with a parent's help a child under the recommended 12 years would enjoy this book easily.

Seedfolks tells the story of a community garden, started by a girl named Kim, unawares, when early one April morning, before school, she plants four bean seeds in a vacant city lot. And the community garden, like the plants themselves, grows from almost nothing, through work, and care, and love. Each chapter gives us another first-person story: Kim, the Vietnamese girl who plants her beans; Curtis, a young black bodybuilder; Wendell, an old white janitor; Ana, and Gonzalo, and Virgil, and Sae Young, and others. And as the garden grows, the community grows too, as the people meet there, and talk, and work together. And the garden becomes a metaphor for the community itself.

Not only is the Seedfolks about different people, about community, and about coming together, it is about paying attention to details, breaking through first impressions. Once we know Curtis likes tomatoes, he becomes something more than young and black. Nora, one of the gardeners, observes how easy it is to lose the important details when she takes friends to the Terminal Tower.

We got off at the observation deck on the forty-second floor to find that the garden, which loomed so large to its tenders, was hopelessly hidden from view by buildings. I looked at all the tourists, who'd no notion it existed, who thought they were seeing all of Cleveland, and restrained myself from pointing and shouting out, "The Gibb Street garden is there!"

Fleischman has woven all these topics together beautifully in this story, and the book should provide food for conversation for days.

If you've read any of my other reviews you know I like books about how people can, on their own small scale, make a difference in the world; preserve a little patch of milkweed, leave a small meadow unmowed, whatever. This book is fiction, and it's about an urban community, but it tells the same kind of story. "You can't see Canda across Lake Erie, but ou know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland. Snow in April always breaks your heart." It's the same with doing our own little bit. You can't let that late snow break your heart.

© 1997, Greg Tillman.

latest update: May 30, 2001
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