Seedfolks
Seedfolks book cover

Seedfolks

Paperback – Illustrated, December 14, 2004

by
Price
$7.49
Format
Paperback
Pages
70
Publisher
HarperTrophy
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0064472074
Dimensions
6.8 x 4.18 x 0.31 inches
Weight
2.08 ounces

Description

★ “ A beautiful, multicolored harvest. The message of diversity, people, and sensibility is universal, and beautifully cultivated by an author who has a green thumb with words.” — School Library Journal (starred review) ★ “ The story’s quiet beauty unfurls effortlessly and lingers after the final page has been turned.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Each voice sings with the rhythm of culture and personality.” — Children’s Book Review Magazine ★ “The characters’ vitality and the sharply delineated details of the neighborhood make this not merely an exercise in craftsmanship or morality but an engaging, entertaining novel as well.” — ALA Booklist (starred review) “Innovative. Effective.” — Horn Book Magazine ALA Best Book for Young Adults School Library Journal Best Book Publishers Weekly Best Book IRA/CBC Children's Choice NCTE Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts Used with one-book programs in: Allen, TX Appleton, WI Arlington, MA Attleboro, MA Berwyn, IL Boca Raton, FL Edgewater, IL Farmington, NM Geneva, NY Hillside, IL Lake Villa, IL Menomonie, WI Nantucket, MA Natick, MA Newburgh, NY Racine, WI Saginaw, MI Somerville, MA Springville, UT St. Louis Park, MN Sun Prairie, WI Tampa, FL Upland, CA Watsonville, CA Winchester, MA the state of Vermont Paul Fleischman 's novels, poetry, picture books, and nonfiction are known for innovation and multiple viewpoints.xa0He received the Newbery Medal for Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices and a Newbery Honor for Graven Images, and he was a National Book Award finalist for Breakout. His books bridging the page and stage include Bull Run, Seek, and Mind's Eye. For the body of his work, he's been the United States nominee for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award.xa0He lives in California.xa0www.paulfleischman.net. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • ALA Best Book for Young Adults ∙
  • School Library Journal
  • Best Book ∙
  • Publishers Weekly
  • Best Book ∙ IRA/CBC Children's Choice
  • ∙
  • NCTE Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts
  • A Vietnamese girl plants six lima beans in a Cleveland vacant lot. Looking down on the immigrant-filled neighborhood, a Romanian woman watches suspiciously. A school janitor gets involved, then a Guatemalan family. Then muscle-bound Curtis, trying to win back Lateesha. Pregnant Maricela. Amir from India. A sense of community sprouts and spreads.
  • Newbery-winning author Paul Fleischman uses thirteen speakers to bring to life a community garden's founding and first year. The book's short length, diverse cast, and suitability for adults as well as children have led it to be used in countless one-book reads in schools and in cities across the country.
  • Seedfolks
  • has been drawn upon to teach tolerance, read in ESL classes, promoted by urban gardeners, and performed in schools and on stages from South Africa to Broadway.
  • The book's many tributaries—from the author's immigrant grandfather to his adoption of two brothers from Mexico—are detailed in his forthcoming memoir
  • , No Map, Great Trip: A Young Writer's Road to Page One.
  • "The size of this slim volume belies the profound message of hope it contains."  —
  • Christian Science Monitor
  • And don’t miss
  • Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices
  • , the Newbery Medal-winning poetry collection!

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(1.3K)
★★★★
25%
(542)
★★★
15%
(325)
★★
7%
(152)
★
-7%
(-153)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Inappropriate for elementary and middle school children

If you'd like your elementary or middle school child to read a chapter about a pregnant sixteen-year-old who is "begging my body to miscarry" and mention "abortion" on the same page (page 67), then this book is for you! If you would like your child to read rich literature instead of garbage, then I suggest choosing a different book. I can't believe this was required reading for my eleven-year-old and that I wasted $9.00 on this.
31 people found this helpful
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Inappropriate for Children

If I could give this 0 stars, that is what it would receive. This book was given to my 9 year old to read in her Gifted and Talented class. It is typical that they give 2-3 grade level higher work to do. However, this book was neither appropriate in content nor challenging intellectually.
The majority of the book has content of a mature nature. Specifically, Leona's dealing with "guns" in the high school her kids attend, Sam's Puerto Rican employee who wants to plant and sell Marijuana, Sae Young's brutal attack and subsequent PTSD and Curtis' promiscuity. Other more subtlety touched issues of racism and stereotyping, murder and family loss are also of concern. The most shocking chapter of all is about Maricela. She is a 16 year old pregnant Mexican girl. She hates that she is fat and talks about abortion and wishing her baby were dead. She says that she herself is dead already. She used to be "really, really hot" but now she is "as fat as a wrestler." In the end, because of the garden and the people in it she stopped wishing her "baby would die" "for just that minute."
I should also say that I did not find "Seedfolks" to be all that enlightening. It seemed shallow and without character depth. It was shocking in places and there was little to no redemption for these issues. It seemed to end abruptly, and Mr. Fleischman gave more depth about himself than he offered in his characters.
I wouldn't mind my child reading this book as a teenager. I do not believe she would be intellectually challenged if she chose to do so. However, she would be mature enough to handle the content and be able to process all the issues presented in this book.
26 people found this helpful
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Life is Made More Beautiful by Simple Gestures...

The diversity of the world is represented by the very real and honest characters who live near the vacant, trash-filled lot that soon becomes a mecca of collaboration, peace, and beauty in this novel. There are 13 chapters to this book, each narrated in the first person by a different character who somehow finds some answer to his/her life's needs through the transformation of a simple garden. You will appreciate the honesty of each character, from the son who sees his father become a greedy liar to the man who understands that sometimes we are responsible for our own segregation. You will love seeing the emotional growth in a Korean woman who is recouperating from a life of tragedy, and your heart will be touched by Curtis who is trying to make amends for his past decisions. What is most impressive is that Fleischman is able to tell this delightful tale in such a way that the reader feels as if they're in on a secret--as if we know how the lives of the characters connect in a way that they do not understand themselves. If you like this clever novel, you will also enjoy Paul Fleischman's Whirligig, which has a similar affect on the reader. I recommend this book to young readers (6th grade+) as well as adults.
23 people found this helpful
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Good Stories, but Too Disconnected

It all started with one little girl. Kim's father died before she was even born, and she is afraid that he might not know her as he looks down from heaven. So she decides to do something to make him recognize her and to make him proud. He was a farmer back in Vietnam, so she takes a handful of bean seeds to a trash-covered vacant lot near her inner-city apartment and plants them. When he looks down and sees them, he will know she is his daughter.

Someone looks down from a window and is intrigued by this girl who keeps visiting the vacant lot in secret. Upon investigation she sees what is going on and decides to clear a little patch of land for a tiny garden of her own. Others observe and like the idea, and soon the vacant lot is covered with a patchwork of gardens from all sorts of people living nearby. Someone is able to bully the city into moving the trash off of this land. People who usually avoid eye contact at all cost are suddenly meeting neighbors and relating to one another. Through this garden project, a neighborhood of strangers becomes a real community.

I liked the characters in this story. They were all very vivid and their stories were well thought out. I also liked being able to see the different perspectives on this garden, and the different reasons people decided to plant things here.

I didn't like that each person's story was just dropped after it was told. I wanted the author to go back and write what the people were thinking. What did Kim think when her garden idea caught on? Was Sam able to stop the segregation he saw developing in the garden? I wanted some followup to each story.
20 people found this helpful
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A Fable for OUR Time

My grandparents, and my parents, read Aesop's Fables to us, and many many other easy-to-grasp Good Example Tales. THIS book, set in a slum of exhausted people, working doggedly just to survive, provides a new setting for a familiar Universal Truth: Everything you do COUNTS, one way or another. It is short, pocket-sized, simple, and CLEAR: EVERYTHING each of us does, ANYTHING we do, will be seen, and may even be copied. The little girl who clears away a tiny piece of a slum-dump-yard and PLANTS FIVE LIMA BEANS is the original angel for a slowly emerging neighborhood garden. Each little space is silently claimed by an individual who has seen hers, taken note, found some inner Hope, done the Work, and Seized the Day. Each paltry plot is personal, the fruit of Quiet but Persistent Attention - and a HUGE PERSONAL VICTORY over despair. I am giving a copy to each of our extended-family Families for my own 79th Birthday, in remembrance of our shared forebears, and in confidence for our individual lives. Plant and Cultivate your OWN Garden (although I will grow tomatoes rather than LIMA beans -- it's MY garden, after all!)
11 people found this helpful
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Not age appropriate for 10 year olds. Adult content.

I am sure that the people writing these reviews are over the age of 10. This is not an age appropriate book for grade school children. It deals with adult subject of suicide, miscarriage, and unwed teenage pregnancy. Better suited for high school students. Was very disturbing to my 10 year old nephew. Book contains adult content and should be rated R.
9 people found this helpful
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Not for fifth grade!!!!

I teach fifth grade and I bought this book from a school book club order. I have always trusted the books I receive from Scholastic book orders to be appropriate material and I do not preread all the books I put in my student library. I brought this book home this weekend because I could not figure out what level to put in the back. I went to Amazon comments and read several reviews. It's a good thing I did! This is a good book but certainly not appropriate for the grade levels 4-6 or ages 9-12. This book is appropriate for middle school. The parents in my room would have been very upset if I had given this book out to read in Literature Circles.
9 people found this helpful
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good luck having a community garden where so much is ...

This book was pedantic, and disjointed. It had no interesting vocabulary words in it. You don't get to know any of the characters, so while an adult pieces in the information from the short sketches, I don't think children have the background knowledge to flesh in the missing pieces. Lastly, good luck having a community garden where so much is grown without professional help.
I was disappointed that this is what my daughter is reading in school.
7 people found this helpful
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Over-Monotonous!!!!

Although this book had a very good moral to it, it became extremely boring. It seemed that each chapter almost had the same basic idea, that they were either depressed or lonely, so they planted something, with a few exceptions. I read this for a 7th-grade assignment, and everyone I know didn't really appreciate it. I definitely don't reccomend this for anyone under 11, because of reference to dumping children in garbage cans (Maricela) and cheating (Curtis).
6 people found this helpful
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Touching, insightful, profoundly hopeful...

I read this outloud to my fourth-grade class a few years ago, and it was a wonderful experience. The book was absolutely appropriate for 10-12 year olds-- especially in a group or discussion format. (Some of the subtle issues might be lost to young readers reading on their own.) This book is a terrific introduction to issues of diversity and the importance of difference in the world. My class was an all-white upper-middle class group, and it was eye-opening for them without being overwhelming, heavy-handed, or too challenging. This book defines hope, and is a necessary part of a curriculum for this alone. Also good for discussions of change, feelings of ambiguity, class-issues, etc.
6 people found this helpful

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