All That Grows
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winner Jack Wong, a story of a boy who discovers that the more he learns, the more there is to know!
On their neighborhood walks together, a boy learns from his older sister all about the plants they see — magnolias that smell like lemon cake, creeping weeds that used to be planted for decoration, and even how dandelion greens can be eaten with spaghetti! But what makes a plant a flower, vegetable or weed, anyway? How can his sister tell, and how does she know so much?
The boy’s head spins as he realizes how vast the universe is and how much there is to learn … until he resolves to let his knowledge grow in its own way and time, just like the mysterious plants he has decided to nurture in the garden.
Award-winning creator Jack Wong brings us a delightful, nuanced story about cultivating patience and letting knowledge grow.
Key Text Features
dialogue
illustrations
Correlates to the Common Core States Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.2
Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.4
Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.7
Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wearing a serious expression, the narrator of this story about cultivation and categorization learns about plants from their older sister, who seems to retain all manner of related knowledge: "How does my sister know?" Told that magnolias smell like lemon cake, and quince trees only produce sweet fruit in warmer climes, the narrator helps their sister weed the plot in which she's growing vegetables ("It's hard work not to mistake one for the other"). Warm, dappled pastel art by Wong (When You Can Swim) captures sunlight playing over the East Asian–cued siblings as they tend the seedlings. Wondering why "only some plants are called vegetables," the narrator keeps watering a thickly weeded patch that their sister has given up on; notes the value of wild-propagated daffodils, dandelions, and maples; and enjoys cooked fiddlehead ferns, which will "make you sick for days if you have them raw." One day, white flowers that the sister has never before seen appear in the weedy patch, an occasion that vindicates the idea that the narrator, too, is a gardener. Played out through quiet internality, the narrator's questioning curiosity, and the discovery they make while trusting their own intuition, provides quiet satisfaction. Ages 3–6.