Fifth graders are reading and illustrating Paul Fleischman's Seedfolks. Thirteen voices tell overlapping stories of a trash-filled vacant lot's transformation into a neighborhood garden. So far we have heard from Kim, a young Korean girl, who plants lima beans to honor her father who died before she was born; Ana, a nosy older woman who assumes Kim is up to no good; Wendell, the school janitor who saves Kim's plants; Gonzalo, who learns to appreciate his Guatemalan Tio Juan and sees him transform from a baby back into a man through his efforts in the garden; Leona, who thinks of an ingenious idea to get the city to clean up the lot; Sam, who holds a contest for the children to figure out how to get water to the garden; and Virgil, who grows tomatoes to win back his former girlfriend. We will finish up when the girls return from Echo Hill.
