The official first day of spring is this week, my oldest is sharing and planting seeds with her class, and we’ll hopefully work on our vegetable garden at our house this weekend. And, of course, we always love books with strong social-emotional lessons around here. So, If You Plant a Seed, written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson, seemed like a perfect book to share now!
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In If You Plant a Seed, a rabbit and a mouse work together to plant seeds and wait ‘with love and care’ for them to grow into a vegetable garden. While they enjoy their feast, a flock of birds appears. On a series of wordless double-spreads, the birds ask for carrots and tomatoes, and the rabbit and the mouse meanly keep the food to themselves.
This one selfish act spirals quickly into a huge mess of poor choices and mean behaviors… Until the mouse decides to share what appears to be the last edible fruit with the birds. That one generous gesture grows into something beautiful, a bounteous feast for all of the animals to enjoy.
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Nelson’s message about sowing seeds of selfishness versus seeds of generosity is obvious, yet never reads as preachy. Our youngest grasped the lesson quickly, and we’ve continued to use the teaching point of connecting expected behaviors (generosity and kindness) to positive returns and the unexpected behaviors (selfishness) to negative returns.
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And, as always, Nelson’s illustrations are breathtaking. His richly-colored oil paintings not only add to the story but tell it, especially when you consider that many of the pages are wordless spreads. In one short book, his illustrations both pull at your heart and make you laugh – just check out the spread of those 5 birds waiting to see if they can have any food!
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If you liked this, check out:
- Other books by Kadir Nelson
- Extra Yarn
- Should I Share My Ice Cream?
- The Girl and the Bicycle
- The Lion and the Mouse
- Because Amelia Smiled
- Goodreads rating – 4.25
- FEEDBACK – Mary