This book, by Jan Karon (the Mitford queen), is a new storybook for kids. I bought it on a whim, because I was cashing out my “Treasure Points” from the Children’s Book of the Month Club and it sounded interesting.
It was wonderful. Of course, it helps that the kids and I grow moonflowers on our back fence every summer, so the kids knew what the seed was from the first minute, and then they recognized the flowers and vine at the end.
But this is a great story even for non-gardeners. Someone gives a lady a seed. The seed is convinced that everyone is wrong when they say it will become a beautiful vine with intoxicatingly fragrant flowers. But the lady soaks it and plants it and it keeps thinking nothing is happening. Then it grows a vine — but when it sees all the other flowers beginning to bloom, it’s convinced that everyone was wrong after all. It doesn’t have a flower on it. How the vine discovers its flowers is a delightful end to a really precious book. It teaches kids about the beauty and potential in everyone, but not in a preachy, condescending way.
I highly recommend this book for reading to kids between 4 and 8. Kids older than that will enjoy reading it themselves, up to about age 10.