Book Recommendation: A Seed is Sleepy
Winter in Maine fuels a hunger for gardening that becomes nearly all-consuming by March. This can affect children, too, and A Seed is Sleepy—by Diana Hutts Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long—can do much to alleviate it. Long’s pictures of familiar and unusual plants, from the bean to the date palm (an extinct plant brought back to life by a scientist who planted a few seeds found in an excavation) are stunning botanical illustrations and typical of Long’s ability to engage children while delighting the adults doing the reading. The narrative describes how seeds of all different kinds begin their lives: in the safety of fruit, as gynosperms (naked seeds from non-flowering plants), floating on ocean currents, and scattered by wind, animals, and even shoelaces.
Illustrations of different plants with vastly different growth cycles depict the similarities and differences of the growing process. The earliest pages depict all the seeds to be found within the book, while the final pages show these seeds as fully-grown and, when appropriate, blossoming plants. My son laughs each time he sees the earbud, knows that the coco de mer palm weighs as much as his grandparent’s Rhodesian Ridgeback, and can identify most of the seeds on the early pages by sight. That is a testament to how much fun a combination of art, ecology, and scientific story can be.
(Recommended by Diane Magras)
