And the Good Brown Earth

"This treasure of a book highlights the bonds between the generations and between gardeners and the earth." — SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

Gram and Joe love to spend time together taking care of the vegetable patch, but it takes a lot of patience. There’s digging time, planting time, weeding time, watering time, even thinking time. Meanwhile, the seasons change, and while Gram does things her way, Joe does things his way. But come harvest, each will find wondrous surprises, thanks to the benevolence of the good brown earth.

Publishers Weekly

During a year's worth of visits to the vegetable patch, Gram, her grandson Joe, and the earth all do what they do best. For Gram, that means knowing when it's the right time to plan, plant and tend a garden ("Now's watching time," she says, putting a scarecrow in the ground to guard against the birds). Young Joe, on the other hand, is an expert at finding the fun in everything-throwing dirt and seeds around in the fall, spraying Gram with the garden hose in summer. And when they complete their season-appropriate tasks, "the good brown earth" takes over, "doing what the good brown earth does best," in the words of the book's rolling refrain. Henderson (The Storm) puts lilting repetition to effective use in her prose, but at times gets carried away with the descriptions. On one early spring visit to the garden, "the birds were singing, the trees were flowering, and the rain and the sun were chasing each other across the sky"-all of which Henderson expresses more fluidly in her feathery, intricately textured landscapes. Overall, however, this is a beguilingly soft-spoken invitation to savor the magic of the ever-changing garden and the intergenerational bond between Gram and Joe. Gram is fun-loving but secure in her role as grown-up. It's no wonder Joe feels so free in her presence-whether he's lolling in the spring grass or feasting on late summer blackberries. Ages 3-up. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kathy Henderson has written several award-winning books, most recently THE STORM, which she also illustrated, and THE BABY DANCES. Of AND THE GOOD BROWN EARTH, she says, "Isn’t it amazing what can happen when you just put a seed in the earth? This story just came springing up out of the ground like the plants in our family vegetable plot, and the seed it took was my youngest child showing me how to do things her way." As well as writing and illustrating, Kathy Henderson works as an artist and printmaker. She has a strong interest in music and sound and has written a number of programs for radio. She lives in North London and has three children.