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To be like the sun

Susan Marie Swanson

Illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine

Picture Book

Ages 4 to 6

Harcourt, 2008, 978-0-15-205796-1

  This is the story of a sunflower seed which a little girl plants in her garden. Carefully the little girl prepares the ground and places the seed in the ground. She knows that “All the instructions [for growing] are written in your heart.”

  Anxiously the little girl watches and waits until finally a little green plant breaks through the soil. For the little girl it is indeed a small miracle how the plant “found your way out of the ground” and how it made “roots and leaves, then stem.

  Then a bud forms looking “like hands closed tight around a treasure.” The little girl waters her sunflower as the summer unfolds and it gets taller and taller until it is taller than she is.

  In the brilliant days and cool evenings the sunflower’s golden head turns to follow the sun in the sky above.

  And then, as fall approaches, the sunflower begins to shed its seeds, seeds which will feed birds and which will grow into new sunflowers the following spring.

  With its gently lyrical language and memorable imagery, the text in this special picture book takes children on a months long journey from the moment when a little seed is planted, to the time when the plant is fading away at the end of the growing season. Unique multimedia illustrations perfectly capture the little girl’s love for her sunflower and the beauty of the changing garden around her.

 

 

 

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