About the Author

Jean Richards is an actress and the author of several children's books including How the Elephant Got Its Trunk, A Fruit Is a Suitcase for Seeds, and God's Gift. Jean lives and works in New York. Illustrator Anca Hariton trained in fine arts and architecture in Bucharest, Romania. A veteran elementary school teacher, her work includes Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Czechoslovakia, A Fruit Is a Suitcase for a Seed, and Egg Story. She lives in Northern California.

Reviews

PreS-Gr 2-Richards's carefully worded information provides an excellent introduction to seeds, their purpose, and growth that should be easy for young children to grasp. On each page, one or two short lines of text appear beneath a large painting. Hariton's use of bright watercolors adds sensual appeal to her illustrations of various fruits, vegetables, animals, and habitats. This cleverly presented book can be used as a read-aloud discussion starter, as a prelude to planting seeds and observing their growth, or in preparation for dissecting fruits and vegetables in order to find the seeds inside. Two final pages in question-and-answer format offer more tidbits of information about seeds. Tiny silhouette people and suitcases parading across the bottom of the pages visually emphasize the suitcase theme in a manner that is appropriate for the intended audience. Allan Fowler's From Seed to Plant (Children's, 2001) presents similar material and is accompanied by color photos and diagrams. Helene J. Jordan's How a Seed Grows (HarperCollins, 1992) and Gail Gibbons's From Seed to Plant (Holiday, 1991), both of them a bit more sophisticated, contain additional information on how seeds grow into plants and would make great companions to Richards's book.-Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.