Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman

A vacant lot filled with garbage to the waist doesn't seem like a particularly ideal spot for a garden. But Kim thought that it would be the perfect place to grow her lima beans and committed herself in making her deceased father proud of her. From this moment, the vacant lot of despair becomes soil filled with promise and hope as strangers in the apartment complex begin to plant their own gardens. Curtis believes he can win Lakeesha back by planting her tomatoes, her favorite. Virgil's dad, sees himself making a fortune from planting lettuce. And Marciela, a young sixteen year-old mother to be, finds herself captivated by the growth and change of flowers, as thoughts of wishing for her baby to die erase from her mind in that very moment.

Thirteen people altogether are impacted by the garden and each bring their diverse backgrounds, experiences, and values and demonstrate this through what they plant in their small area of soil. And while the garden is segregated into areas that depict a certain race, culture, and ethnicity, it proves to be a common ground for all members of the neighborhood and they assist one another in the growth of their plants.

Fleischman's literary technique is exemplary as he strings these thirteen stories together in a way to show how each of person's experience in the lot affects its overall success in thriving and developing into a garden. This is also depicted on the cover of the book by illustrator Judy Pederson in her images of some of the characters stories and objects tied together in a quilt-like formation, to prompt to the reader that their stories will be told within the pages of Seedfolks. Just as the plants in the garden grew, so did the hopes and dreams for each person that worked there. "We like our seeds, were now planted in the garden." (p. 50) There is also somewhat of a predictability as I continued to read, knowing that each perspective would add their own account on how the garden has changed his or her life. Similarly, Pederson's singular illustration also adds to this predictability in each chapter and how that object is associated with the text.

And as people in this small neighborhood in Cleveland became more familiar with one another, the barriers of race and culture that separated their gardens didn't seem to exist any longer. Fleischman details this in a particular scene in which an old Italian woman praises Amir for his eggplants and how she was so happy she'd met him. "But something bothered me. Then I remembered. A year before she'd claimed that she'd received wrong change in my store...She'd gotten quite angry and called me-despite her accent-a dirty foreigner. Now that we were so friendly with one another I dared to remind her of this. Her eyes became huge. She apologized to me over and over again. She kept saying, "Back then, I didn't know it was you...". I believe that this was Fleishman's way of demonstrating the power of seeing beyond physical differences in one another and to focus on finding the similarities inside, and how despite the differences that may exist, much can be learned from one another.

This is also true with Royce and how most people felt relieved when he left the garden due to him being black and homeless. "Then he began spending more time there. We found out that he had a stutter...He was trusted and liked-and famous, after his exploit with the pitchfork. He was not a black teenage boy. He was Royce. And people found out that he wanted to be helpful, and in return he wanted to feel a part of the community just as the others did.

Fleischman begins the story with Kim, a young oriental girl who plants her lima beans, and ends the story a year later with the spring season beginning, beginning the garden's renewal of hope and promise to all those watching and waiting to begin yet again. This literary technique comforts the reader in predicting that the garden will thrive again through the upcoming months and continue to be a place where all of its cultivators will return year after year. And their harvest celebration becomes much more than trading gardening tips, but celebrates the way that they have become an important part of each other's lives.

This book was a quick read for me - and during my time reading, the words have a way of placing you in that garden and being right there as a part of the neighborhood. Although the story is short, the messages that you come away learning can stay with you forever. It is true that you should never judge a book by it's cover because after you read it, you question yourself as to why you would ever think that way in the first place because of what you learned. Perhaps this was true to many of the characters in Seedfolks. A powerful, yet true message that we should all try to live by.

"Gardening...has suspense, tragedy, startling developments a soap opera growing out of the ground." Indeed it does. The vacant lot could be in any city as the message of diversity, people, and sensibility is universal, and beautifully cultivated by an author who has a green thumb with words." ~Julie Cummins, New York Public Library

After reading Missing May and now, Seedfolks, I realized something that both stories had in common. Both Rylant and Fleischman had gardens in their stories that proved to be integral in the story's plot and development of the characters. As equally interesting, and perhaps also coincidental, Fleischman also wrote a book titled Whirligigs, detailing a story about a young boy that creates whirligigs to keep the young girl's spirit and memory alive, after she tragically died in a car accident due to his drunk driving. The symbolism of the whirligigs is also present in Seedfolks as Bo lets his whirligigs free in the wind after being placed in May's garden, a place that she once loved to be.