Joy Takes Root
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- USD 7.99
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- USD 7.99
Publisher Description
In her grandmother's garden, a young Black girl learns about mindfulness and herbal medicine in this soothing intergenerational story about our connection to nature.
It's Joy's first summer in her grandmother's South Carolina garden—a rite of passage. In the midst of okra, spinach, and strawberries, Grammy teaches Joy that plants are friends with many uses. Herbs, for example, can be turned into medicine.
There in Grammy's abundant backyard, Joy learns to listen for the heartbeat of the earth and connect it to her own as she takes deep breaths and puts her intentions into the soil. By the story's end, she learns to grow seeds in her own garden, honoring all that her grandmother taught her. With sensory-rich illustrations from award-winning illustrator Ashleigh Corrin, Joy Takes Root is a blissful reminder of all that might bloom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Making her picture book debut, Wallace centers a Black-presenting family's time gardening together as a means of looking forward and back. "The most important thing to remember," Grammy tells young Joy as they together tour Grammy's expansive South Carolina garden, "is that plants are our friends and our family." Pointing out all of the flora she cultivates, Grammy next offers up information about herbs' medicinal properties and teaches Joy how to plant seeds of her own. A moving series of spreads observes Grammy paying homage to the family's ancestors—"the ways they took care of this same soil" and the way their love is ready to be passed on—before inviting Joy to both "put our intention into the soil" and consider how "each drop of water holds the memories of all the water before it." Textural hand-drawn and digital illustrations by Corrin (Layla's Happiness) highlight the garden in colorful detail, showing fruitful connections via images of a bumble bee perched on a squash blossom and of Joy, seated on the globe, resting her hand on the earth. It's a reap-what-you-sow telling that considers what's been given and what's yet to come. Ages 4–8. Author's agent: Wendi Gu, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. Illustrator's agent: Nicole Geiger, Full Circle Literary.
