A vacant lot, rat-infested and filled with garbage, looked like no place for a garden. Especially to a neighborhood of strangers where no one seems to care. Until one day, a young girl clears a small space and digs into the hard-packed soil to plant her precious bean seeds. Suddenly, the soil holds promise: To Curtis, who believes he can win back Lateesha's heart with a harvest of tomatoes; to Virgil's dad, who sees a fortune to be made from growing lettuce; and even to Maricela, sixteen and pregnant, wishing she were dead.

Thirteen very different voices -- old, young, Haitian, Hispanic, tough, haunted, and hopeful -- tell one amazing story about a garden that transforms a neighborhood.

Chosen as a state and citywide read in communities across the country:
Vermont
Racine, WI
Tampa, FL
Newburgh, NY
Boca Raton, FL

ISBN13: 9780064472074

Condition: New

Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Average Customer Review: ( 110 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

This is a moving story which presents multi-cultural urban life in both its negative and positive aspects. Each chapter is told in the first person by a different member of the community. Thus, by the end of the book we have heard a great diversity of voices: male and female, of many age groups, and of many different ethnic backgrounds.

I was really impressed with this book, and recommend it to both younger readers and adults. For an interesting companion text to "Seedfolks," try "O Pioneers!", the classic novel by Willa Cather.

16 of 19 found the following review helpful:

Life is Made More Beautiful by Simple Gestures...Jan 12, 2002
By Lisa Johannes
The diversity of the world is represented by the very real and honest characters who live near the vacant, trash-filled lot that soon becomes a mecca of collaboration, peace, and beauty in this novel. There are 13 chapters to this book, each narrated in the first person by a different character who somehow finds some answer to his/her life's needs through the transformation of a simple garden. You will appreciate the honesty of each character, from the son who sees his father become a greedy liar to the man who understands that sometimes we are responsible for our own segregation. You will love seeing the emotional growth in a Korean woman who is recouperating from a life of tragedy, and your heart will be touched by Curtis who is trying to make amends for his past decisions. What is most impressive is that Fleischman is able to tell this delightful tale in such a way that the reader feels as if they're in on a secret--as if we know how the lives of the characters connect in a way that they do not understand themselves. If you like this clever novel, you will also enjoy Paul Fleischman's Whirligig, which has a similar affect on the reader. I recommend this book to young readers (6th grade+) as well as adults.

6 of 7 found the following review helpful:

Touching, insightful, profoundly hopeful...May 19, 2002

I read this outloud to my fourth-grade class a few years ago, and it was a wonderful experience. The book was absolutely appropriate for 10-12 year olds-- especially in a group or discussion format. (Some of the subtle issues might be lost to young readers reading on their own.) This book is a terrific introduction to issues of diversity and the importance of difference in the world. My class was an all-white upper-middle class group, and it was eye-opening for them without being overwhelming, heavy-handed, or too challenging. This book defines hope, and is a necessary part of a curriculum for this alone. Also good for discussions of change, feelings of ambiguity, class-issues, etc.

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:

A Must Read for Young Adults!May 11, 2008
By Sara J. Needham "Sara Jean"
SeedFolks By Paul Fleischman
Harper Collins Publisher 1997
Flesh Kincaid Index- 4.9
69 pages
Genre: contemporary fiction

Synopsis of plot: Seedfolks takes place in Cleveland, Ohio in a low-income neighborhood. The main setting is a small, abandoned and run down lot in the neighborhood. The book is narrated by a different character every chapter, although the presence and connection of all the narrators is intertwined throughout the chapters. The novel opens with Kim, a young Vietnamese girl struggling with the early loss of her father. To gain a connection to her otherwise estranged dad, she decides to plant some beans to honor his life as a farmer. She chooses the abandoned lot as her garden. The chapters that follow introduce other characters that end up planting in the lot as well, all for their own unique reasons. The reader sees the narrators from past chapters showing up in the new narrators' chapters. Each character has their own problem that essentially is solved by their participation in the growth of the garden. Strangers who normally do not acknowledge each other's existence begin to say hello, offer advice, and communicate across language barriers.

Address negative aspects of the book: One of the negative aspects of the book that I encountered was that the chapters are so short! Each character had their own personal story to share, but a few pages do not do them all justice! The author leaves you wanting more, but in a negative way. Another negative aspect is that I still had questions and concerns about each character when the book ended. The book concludes the same way it starts, with a narrator's story, and some strings are never tied up. This frustrated me as the reader.

Personal appraisal of the book: I thought this book was fantastic. It was quick to read and really hard to put down. I got attached to each character and really enjoyed seeing past narrators through the new narrator's eyes. The connection of all the characters was also really interesting. Seeing how Kim, the first character, is brought up in subsequent chapters and appears throughout the book was an appealing and unique quality of the writer. Living in a city like Cleveland, I can identify with how strangers ignore each other on the streets and feel they have nothing in common- even though they live within blocks and see each other every day! The diversity of the characters reminded me of my own neighborhood, and since reading the book, I've decided to say a simple hello to my fellow neighbors when passing them around the block. It's interesting to see how people react to kindness from strangers! You should definitely consider spending the couple of hours it takes to read this book to begin to think about how the book parallels aspects of your own life. I give this book 5 out of 5 stars!


3 of 3 found the following review helpful:

Inspiring SeedfolksApr 25, 2007

Seedfolks is a book about a vacant city lot in Cleveland, Ohio that is abandoned until one day a Vietnamese girl decides to plant some beans as a way to become connected to her father who died before she was born. It tells the story of 13 different people who come together by this garden. They are all different ages and have different ethnic backgrounds and jobs. Somehow this garden brings them all together and means something different to each of them. The individual stories are interesting and touching.

My favorite part of the book is Gonzolo's Tio Juan story. He came to the U.S. with Gonzolo's mother and brother. Because he didn't speak English and couldn't work he would wonder around all day long with nothing to do and had to be baby sat by Gonzolo who who referred to him as a baby. One day he went off on his own in the neighborhood and came across the garden. The next day he went back and started working in the garden and planting seeds. Back in Guatemala he used to be a farmer and this gave him life again and he went from being a baby back to a man again.

I would recommend that you read Seedfolks. I think you will be touched by the 13 different people who are brought together through this community garden. In Reading Gonzolo's story it made me think about my Mom's parents who are immigrants from Portugal and how they too must of felt like Gonzolo's Tio Juan when they first arrived in the U.S., like they were babies and didn't know anything.


See all 110 customer reviews on Amazon.com