Review by Chris Singer
About the author:
Kathryn O. Galbraith is an award-winning children’s book author with more than a dozen picture books to her credit, including Boo, Bunny!; Arbor Day Square; Traveling Babies; and Laura Charlotte. She teaches writing for children at the University of Washington
About the illustrator:
Wendy Anderson Halperin is the illustrator of over twenty-five books, including Thank You, God, For Everything and Turn! Turn! Turn! She also created the award-winning project “Drawing Children into Reading.” She lives in Michigan.
About the book:
Seed by seed, we plant the wild meadow garden wind and water, birds and animals, plants and people all of us together.
In this lyrical picture book, author Kathryn O. Galbraith explains the many ways in which seeds are spread and planted.
A farmer and her son plant vegetables in their garden, and the wind carries a few seeds away. Birds and animals may carry some along with them on their travels. Sometimes the rain washes them away to a new and unexpected location. And sometimes something more extraordinary occurs, as in when the pods of the Scotch Broom plant open explosively in the summer heat, scattering seed everywhere like popcorn. Year-round, we all play a role in the dispersal of seeds throughout our landscape, planting the wild garden together.
My take on the book:
Reading this book made me think back to last summer when our daughter was barely 15 months old and she experienced her first time outside “working” in the garden with her mom. Every night after dinner we would go water our backyard garden, and our daughter had her own little watering can. She would follow us around and even at that young age, she would go to every single plant. Some of my favorite pictures are of these times last year.
It’s also apropos that Planting the Wild Garden was set for an April publishing date. Not only is Earth Day in a few weeks, but it’s also National Poetry Month. This latest release from Kathryn Galbraith reads like a beautiful, lyrical poem with it’s easy, flowing style. Part of the beauty of the text is its accessibility to both early and more experienced readers. Wendy Halperin’s accompanying illustr