What We're Reading: Brenda

Cecil's Garden by Holly Keller and Jody's Beans by Malachy Doyle with Illustrations by Judith Allibone

Cecil's Garden is the story of Cecil the rabbit and his brother Jake and sister Posey. They want to plant a garden but there is only room for five rows of vegetables and they have six packets of seeds. Nobody can decide what to do and after spending the morning arguing it is too hot to do anything. Cecil decides to visit some friends and after witnessing their disagreements decides that "all this quarreling seems to me to be a foolish waste of time". He knows what he has to do to solve the garden problem and comes up with a simple solution that will please everyone and get the garden planted! This story has a wonderful message about working together and the power of compromise to get things done. The illustrations are simple but bright and sunny and complement the story nicely.

Jody's Beans tells the story of a little girl named Jody who plants runner beans with her Granda one summer. When Granda comes to visit in the spring he brings a packet of runner beans which he shows Jody how to plant and care for. All season long Granda calls and visits getting reports on how the beans are doing from Jody and giving additional advice and instructions. Whenever Jody asks what they will look like or how big they will get Granda's answer is "Wait and See". This allows Jody to make her own discoveries about the beans and by the end of the story she is telling Granda to "Wait and See"! This is a very sweet story about the cycle of life and a grandfather passing down his love of gardening to his grandchild. The growing process is cleary explained and the book even contains an index of the different steps at the end of the book. This is a wonderful book that will hopefully instill an interest in gardening in young readers and may even get them to eat their beans!