Uncle John's City Garden
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
How does this city garden grow? With help from L’il Sissy and her siblings--and love, love, love! A celebration of nature, family, and food.
Visiting the city from her home in the suburbs, an African American girl sees how a few packets of seeds, some helping hands, and hard work transform an empty lot in a housing project into a magical place where vegetables grow and family gathers. It’s the magic of nature in the heart of the city!
Bernette Ford’s autobiographical story is a loving glimpse at a girl, her siblings, and her uncle, and their shared passion for farming. L’l Sissy’s fascination with measurement, comparison, and estimation introduces children to STEM concepts. And the progress of Uncle John’s garden introduces readers to the life cycle of plants.
Frank Morrison, winner of multiple Coretta Scott King awards and an NAACP Image Award, depicts dramatic cityscapes as well as the luscious colors and textures of Nature.
A Smithsonian Magazine Best Children's Book of the Year
A BCCB Blue Ribbon Book
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three Black siblings assist Uncle John, "a great big man," with a veggie patch in this warm intergenerational portrait. Narrated from the perspective of youngest sibling Li'l Sissy, the book is based on the late Ford's own uncle, who, per an author's note, cultivated a similar plot in 1950s Canarsie, Brooklyn. With personal-feeling prose that centers themes of relative size and growth through life's seasons, Li'l Sissy describes how, under Uncle John's tutelage, she and her brother and sister plant corn, lima beans, tomatoes, onions, and okra—the ingredients for succotash, a family favorite—in a city housing development's garden and spend the summer watching it grow until a season's-end barbecue. Emphasizing the quartet's kinship and pride in their work, Morrison's distinguished oil and spray-paint art also juxtaposes expansive planes to portray the sizable horizontal garden plot amid the community's vertical buildings. Aptly partnered, the creators present a moving picture of how food can bind people and communities. Back matter includes an author's note and succotash recipe. Ages 4–8.
