Sky Sweeper, Phillis Gershator, illustrations by Holly Meade

One of my favorite picture books of 2007, Sky Sweeper, was a Lupine Honor Award. The gentle book is a tale of Takeboki, from young man to old man to death, his career as a flower sweeper and his complete serenity with his life work, despite the admonitions of others that he’s not fulfilling some greater destiny. The parable relates basic Buddhist principles and provides a subtle, life affirming lesson for all. The closely interwoven blend between text and art, soft collage illustrations made from Japanese papers, is perfect. Holly Meade’s ability to capture the poetry of Japanese art is sheer genius. (Stephanie Kumble)

About the Author: Born in New York City in 1942, Phillis Gershator has always loved books. She has been a children’s librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library and a librarian in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Her first children’s book was published in 1979.

About the Illustrator: Holly Meade has illustrated more than 20 children’s books since 1992, including Thai Lullaby, written by Minfong Ho, for which Meade received a Caldecott Honor award; and John Willy and Freddy McGee, for which she received the Charlotte Zolotow Award for Creative Writing. Meade is a Maine artist who is also creates woodblock prints. Her work is on display at the Reach Read Gallery in Sedgwick.

Seedfolks, Paul Fleischman

Seedfolks is a slim volume of thirteen chapters, each narrated by a different resident of the same inner-city neighborhood in Cleveland. A little girl plants a few bean plants in a vacant lot, unknowingly sowing the seeds for a transformative urban garden. I’ve been drawn to this book—part of the New Books, New Readers “Community” series—because I am such a fan of Fleischman’s poems for two voices, collected in Joyful Noise and its companion volumes. But it was just this month that I finally grabbed Seedfolks on CD for a Memorial Day road trip. The audiobook was released in 2003 by (formerly) Maine-based Audio Bookshelf, and selected as a Best of the Best Children’s Audio for Summer Listening by Portland-based AudioFile Magazine in 2004. The production uses a full cast of narrators whose voices are as varied as the characters in the book. They are old, young, cautious, determined, wise—and they come from many cultural backgrounds, including Mexican and Vietnamese. I know it’s terribly cliché to say that these voices “bring the story to life,” but I hope you will forgive me, just this once. Community gardens everywhere are beginning to bloom! What a perfect time for story that delivers an infusion of hope, in keeping with the season. (Brita Zitin)

About the Author: Son of notable children’s author Sid Fleischman, Paul Fleischman grew up listening to his father’s imaginative and compelling stories. Born in 1952 in Santa Monica, California, Fleischman moved across the country to live a 200-year-old home in New Hampshire. A deep interest in history and different points of view had influenced his fiction.

The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett

In this satirical “what-if” story, the Queen stumbles into a library bookmobile and, under the unexpected guidance of one of her kitchen staff members, gradually is transformed into an obsessive and voracious reader, with all sorts of consequences for her staff and subjects. A quirky little story, this book offers an entertaining way to spend an evening. Yet mixed in with the truly funny narrative are insights into the current state of literature in modern society. (Erik Jorgensen)

About the Author: Born in Leeds, Yorkshire, U.K., in 1934, Alan Bennett is a well-known contemporary British dramatist. He first became famous as part of the 1960’s comedy troupe Beyond the Fringe. His plays include The Madness of George III and History Boys, both of which have been made into films.

Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko

Tayo, a half-Navajo WWII vet, suffers from PTSD or “shell shock” as it was then known, and his journey of healing involves reconciling his Navajo and white identities, a reconciliation that is made up in part of the ceremony of the book’s title. The novel’s form is itself a kind of ceremony, moving between past and present, the real and the imagined. Although in many respects a harsh condemnation of white society and its destruction of Native American way of life, the book ends on a note of hope that the good in both cultures can prevail. This book is used in Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care®. (Victoria Bonebakker)

About the Author: Leslie Marmon Silko was born in 1948 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, Silko is a major figure in Native American fiction today. Ceremony is her most famous novel, published in 1977. She received a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant in 1981.

Come Spring, Ben Ames Williams

This sprawling 1940 epic of the founding of Union, Maine during the revolutionary era was based on a well-researched 1841 history of Union, written by John Langdon Sibley, a Union native who became librarian at Harvard University. While it can feel somewhat dated in terms of its style, it’s a good read, and remains an important monument in Maine literary history, one that still attracts visitors to Union. (Erik Jorgensen)

About the Author: Ben Ames Williams, born in Macon, Mississippi in 1889, was one of the most popular American novelists of his era. He came east to attend Dartmouth and lived in the Boston area for the rest of his life, summering in Blue Hill and North Searsmont. He wrote 38 novels and close to 400 short stories before his death in 1953.

The Education of a Gardener, Russell Page

Russell Page shares a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of a professional artist who used the garden as his canvas. For Page, gardens include not just the floribunda roses and Hidcote lavender that characterize the cottage gardens of his native Great Britain, but also wide estates that use clumps of maples and aspens as important focal points with a mountain range in the distance. Page’s gardens include buildings, existing vegetation, and sky, each providing background, walls, and ceiling for a vast outdoor living space. His philosophy is to view each aspect as an essential part, and most of all to make sure they match. Near the beginning, Page writes of the temptations one meets in nurseries and warns the reader of the folly of buying plants that may not go with one’s space. His descriptions of the aesthetic mess that can result (which he admits he has himself done) are very funny, but most valuable is the inspiration this book will give any gardener in seeing a landscape in a new light and considering new options for creating a truly comfortable and “right” outdoor space. (Diane Magras)

About the Author: Born in 1906, Russell Page studied at the Slade School of Art in London and in Paris before turning his sketchpad to garden design in 1928. He relied on sketches, never designing a garden without them, and used his imagination and his vast knowledge of plants to create cottage gardens, estates, public spaces, and corporate parks. His work brought him not only across Europe but to the Middle East and North and South Africa, lending him a deep understanding and appreciation of many cultural approaches to gardens.