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Author and educator Kerr has arrayed a colorful, comprehensible collection of facts and fun focused on the growth of plants from their origins as seeds, combined with simple religious references, to delight young readers and incite them to productive, rewarding action. Her book, illustrated brightly to provide a further grasp of her central themes, begins with God’s creation of the earth, a six-day project. On the third day, he made plants, which were embedded with seeds that would make plants with more seeds so that food, flowers, and trees would cover the earth’s surface through the ages. Each seed, the author stresses, is unique, a point emphasized by a picture in which a corn plant invites a daisy to join it in making corn, but the flower refuses, certain that God has ordered it to make only daisy seeds.
One remarkable feature of seeds expounded here is their multitude of shapes and sizes. A bean is a seed, as is a tiny kernel of corn, while a coconut is a giant seed in itself. Seeds have a natural cycle of drying, yet even a tiny bean, if pried open, can reveal the leaves of a new plant ready to sprout under the right conditions. Seeds need water to produce plants. If water is not available, the seed “waits and rests,” sometimes for years. If, by contrast, the conditions for the new plant are too hot and dry, it will hasten to grow and produce more seeds for the next generation. Seeds may fly, some may fall, and some are carried by animals in their fur on or their feet. Kerr’s tale ends with a short, informative instructional section called “How to Plant Seeds” so that all readers may engage in God’s plan for continued creation.
Kerr, a certified teacher in science and family and consumer sciences, has a life-long appreciation for the earth’s glories that her book so deftly describes, always reminding her audience, as she would likewise remind her students, that “science is the art of wondering.” Her own sense of wonder is clearly communicated with a series of pictures that accompany her text, each featuring a little polka-dotted bug whose curiosity and venturesome spirit may be an example for young readers to follow as it watches seeds parachuting to the ground from tall plants and sets out on a journey with a wooly sheep coated with seeds to be spread in new homes.
The purely didactic segment of Kerr’s offering will encourage children and their parents to experiment with the concepts she sets forth, with definite directions on how to locate, plant, and care for a variety of seeds. Too, Kerr’s Christian convictions play a significant role in the educational material she shares, as her book is rife with reminders that God is the creator of these complex natural wonders. The volume concludes with a message regarding the love of Jesus, who, like a seed, was raised from the dead and is now in Heaven, which is, as Kerr asserts, “the Best News for all time.”
RECOMMENDED by the US Review