Digging in the dirt, poking seeds into the ground, standing over the pot every morning waiting for something green — that is your gardener. You reach for the one that fits your child right now. A toddler gets a rainbow of flowers to name; a five-year-old gets the real facts about how a carrot grows; an older reader who's ready gets a whole novel set in a hidden, coming-back-to-life garden. Pick by age and mood, and hand it over.
Any one of them satisfies the pull to grow things, and they sort themselves by age more than anything. Planting a Rainbow and The Tiny Seed are for the smallest gardeners, a color game and a gentle seed's journey. The Curious Garden, Miss Rumphius, and Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt are picture-book stories with a bit more heart and detail, a boy who greens a gray city, a woman who scatters lupine seeds to make the world lovelier, a year of gardening with Nana over a hidden world of soil creatures. The Vegetables We Eat is the fact book for the child who wants to know exactly how it all works. And The Secret Garden waits at the far end for an older reader ready for a real novel. Look at the child, look at the age, and pick.