Our School Garden!

Gr 2–4—In this picture book, the arrival of a new boy sets the scene for acquainting children with the idea of a school garden. The narrative includes facts, poems, a word study, riddles, and even a recipe for stone soup. Themes of independence, cooperation, and community shine through the parallel telling of a story and of scientific details about gardening, including a brief history of victory gardens. Other topics include harvest celebrations, compost, seeds, and "companion planting." The final pages offer additional resources for starting and maintaining a school or community garden. Though this may not be a book to read aloud cover to cover, it is suitable for independent reading or rich conversation centered around the text and mixed-media collage illustrations. This may be best described as the stone soup of books about school gardening.—Lindsay Persohn, University of South Florida, Tampa