Seedfolks

Prior to reading Seedfolks, I was not really sure what to expect.  The text is extremely short as it is only 87 pages and I often get confused when reading books with multiple characters.  However, this piece of literature could not have been more surprising to me as I loved it more than I could have ever envisioned. This story was writing by Paul Fleischman in 1997 and it was illustrated by Judy Pedersen, and it follows thirteen different characters as they all find common ground among a vacant lot within their hometown and they each begin growing some sort of vegetable in order to create a community garden.  Many of the character's overlap in a multitude of manners and therefore this text is extremely easy for readers to keep track of each individual characters importance.  The chapter's are also titled with each character's name to ensure readers understand who they are reading about prior to reading each chapter.  As a truly inspirational story, this novel serves as a great way to show readers the importance of communities and would pair great as an ELA integration into a social studies unit involving communities and their relationships.  Although this story is a chapter book, it is very simple in its text structure and would be very appealing for upper grade elementary school students to read.