The Gardener: (Caldecott Honor Book)

by Sarah Stewart, David Small (Illustrator)

Overview

The Gardener is a 1997 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year and a 1998 Caldecott Honor Book.

From the author-and-illustrator team of the bestselling The Library.

Lydia Grace Finch brings a suitcase full of seeds to the big gray city, where she goes to stay with her Uncle Jim, a cantankerous baker. There she initiates a gradual transformation, bit by bit brightening the shop and bringing smiles to customers' faces with the flowers she grows. But it is in a secret place that Lydia Grace works on her masterpiece — an ambitious rooftop garden — which she hopes will make even Uncle Jim smile. Sarah Stewart introduces readers to an engaging and determined young heroine, whose story is told through letters written home, while David Small's illustrations beautifully evoke the Depression-era setting.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312367497
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	05/01/2007
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	65,767
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 10.50(h) x 0.10(d)
Lexile:	AD570L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Husband and wife duo Sarah Stewart and David Small have worked together on several picture books, including The Friend, The Money Tree, and The Library. The Gardener is a Caldecott Honor book. Small has also illustrated other books, including the 2001 Caldecott Medal winner So You Want to Be President?, by Judith St. George. Stewart and Small live in a historic home on a bend of the St. Joseph River in Michigan.

Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions

1. How does David Small, the illustrator, use the endpapers to suggest what the book is about?

2. Have students look at the entire book without reading the text. Ask the class to choose words that best describe Elizabeth. Read the text aloud. Ask students to compare their descriptions of Elizabeth with the way she is presented in the book by Sarah Stewart.

3. Note the black-and-white sketches located near the text on each page (e.g., the stork on page 7). What is the purpose of these motifs?

4. Elizabeth Brown decides to settle down and begins tutoring for pay. Discuss why tutoring is a good job for Elizabeth Brown. Speculate: Whom does she tutor? What subject might she tutor?

5. Ask students to suggest book titles for the children's collection at the Elizabeth Brown Free Library. Have them share their suggestions in class and explain their choices. Have the class determine how each book should be classified.

6. Sponsor a class "readers' olympiad." Ask students to draw up the rules (e.g., the number of books or pages to be read, ways to share the books, how winners are to be chosen). Ask each student to design a bookmark that might be given to a child who participates in the event.

7. Tell students that the Boston Public Library is the first public library in the United States to lend a book. Encourage students to visit the Web site for the Boston Public Library (www.bpl.org), and ask them to find out what programs the library offers children. Students may also be interested in finding out the history of the public library in their community.

Editorial Reviews

To ease the Depression's burdens on her family, an irrepressible girl spends the summer with her dour baker uncle in the city. In a starred review, PW said that this Caldecott Honor book "speaks volumes about the vast impact one small individual can make." All ages. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Music and sound effects enhance the narration of Sarah Stewart's story of a young girl whose green thumb brings beauty into the lives of those around her. The recording frees listeners to savor David Small's Caldecott Honor illustrations.

School Library Journal

This latest collaboration from Stewart and Small (The Library, 1995, not reviewed) is the Depression-era story of young Lydia Grace Finch, whose family's financial woes are the occasion for Lydia's extended stay in the city with dour Uncle Jim. Lydia's letters to her parents and Grandma, her beloved gardening partner, tell of her adjustment to the city, her work in her uncle's bakery, and of her determination to make her uncle smile. Meanwhile, the pictures show Lydia's gradual transformation of the drab shop and their apartment "over the store," as she plants the seeds from Grandma in pots and tubs and flowerboxes in every possible space. Her pièce de résistance is the lush roof garden she cultivates in secret and springs on her uncle on the Fourth of July, earning Uncle Jim's equivalent of "one thousand smiles," a huge cake elaborately decorated with flowers. It's a lovely story exemplifying the old adage, "Brighten the corner where you are," and a good introduction to the epistolary form of storytelling. Small's marvelous pictures show the city in all its gritty variety—pushcarts, pigeons, packing crates, fire escapes, awnings, nuns, bums, and dogs—and the scrawny, smiling bakery cat, Otis.

Kirkus Reviews

Late in the summer of 1935, Lydia Grace's parents are out of work, and to help make ends meet they send Lydia Grace to live with Uncle Jim, a baker in the city...Told entirely through letters, the story radiates her utterly (and convincingly) sunny personality...[An] inspiring offering from creative collaborators.” —Starred, Publishers Weekly

“A moving, wonderfully rich illustrated story. It is that rarity, a pictorial delight that in 20 double pages gives more and more of itself each time it's read, and whose silent complexities reveal themselves with continuing pleasure.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher