While gardening, potting plants, and spreading mulch this morning I listened to a Seedfolks (2003) by Paul Fleischman on my iPod, it just seemed appropriate. Each chapter is an individual story, so each has a different voice and ideal for listening. It is a quiet calm book with a big message. It is a wonderful children's book - for all ages.
In the middle of urban Cincinnati, in a trash strewn empty lot a small oriental girl plants a lima bean seed, a suspicious white neighbor digs it up expecting to find drugs. When she realizes that she done she replants the seeds. Slowly the neighbors all start planting little plots and the former wasteland becomes a wonderful urban community garden of vegetables and flowers. Each neighbor is of a different race or nationality. The garden becomes a wonderful symbol of not only diversity, but of becoming true neighbors and friends. Bringing down more barriers that just that of ethnicity.
It takes less than two hours to listen to this book and I wish it could have gone on and on. I miss my old gardening chums from where I used to live - I never had to buy a plant for my garden there. I already have a couple of gardening buddies here and they have given me starts of plants. When my garden is more mature I will definitely do the same.