by Jon-Erik Lappano
Illustrated by Kellen Hatanaka
Groundwood Books
978-1-55498-798-6
32 pp.
Ages 3-7
March 2016
Imagine a small house that was once part of a countryside lush with forests and meadows and wildlife now dwarfed by skyscrapers and hidden among the overdeveloped city buildings and billboards. This is the house of Tokyo and his parents and his grandfather, the original owner of the country home, and Kevin the cat.
When an elderly woman on a bicycle hands Tokyo three seeds, telling him “…they will grow into whatever you wish”, the boy removes a brick from their yard and plants them in the soil beneath. The next day, there are three small wildflowers. After breakfast, there is moss covering the bricks. By dinner, there are trees and shrubs and more wildflowers. And by the next day, “the garden had grown up and over the buldings, across the streets, dwon the road, over the cars and into the expressway.” With time, the city is made over into a wild entity of rivers and forests and wildlife and the people adapt to these changes because “Gardens have to grow somewhere, after all.”
From Tokyo Digs a Garden by Jon-Erik Lappano, illus. by Kellen Hatanaka |
Tokyo Digs a Garden plants the seeds for discussion of nature and land development and sows the dramatic beauty of transformation.
From Tokyo Digs a Garden by Jon-Erik Lappano, illus. by Kellen Hatanaka |
No comments:
Post a Comment