Seedfolks

Using the multiple voices that made Bull Run (1995) so absorbing, Fleischman takes readers to a modern inner-city neighborhood and a different sort of battle, as bit by bit the handful of lima beans an immigrant child plants in an empty lot blossoms into a community garden, tended by a notably diverse group of local residents. 

Arraying different voices like threads on a loom, Fleischman (Bull Run) weaves a seamless tale of the advent of a garden in urban Cleveland and how it unites a community. Here Fleischman slips with equal ease into the voices of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl grieving for the father she never knew; a retired peace activist; a shopkeeper from Delhi; a dedicated British nurse; a 39-year-old Korean widow and crime victim hesitantly rejoining the world; a pregnant Mexican teenager; and seven other equally diverse characters. Fleischman carefully adds texture upon texture, crafting his story with wry humor and lustrous imagery: dead leaves reappear as the winter snows melt away "like a bookmark showing where you'd left off"; beans inadvertently uprooted are laid back in the ground "as gently as sleeping babies." The story's quiet beauty unfurls effortlessly—and lingers after the final page has been turned. Ages 10-up. (May)

Copyright 1997 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission

A beautiful, multicolored harvest. The message of diversity, people, and sensibility is universal, and beautifully cultivated by an author who has a green thumb with words.