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GROWING GOOD KIDSsm 2008 Book Award Winners

is part of an integrated project based learning opportunity and its accompanying curricula. Each year,

the Junior Master Gardener Program and the American Horticultural Society honor engaging, inspiring works of plant, garden and ecology-themed children’s literature…*

Just this past month, at the University of Delaware, the 2008 winners were named and honored at the American Horticulture Society’s 16th Annual National Children and Youth Garden Symposium. These books would be excellent resources to add to your media center, library or personal collection.

One very interesting award winner is author/illustrator, Dar Hosta’s, If I Were A Tree. A story that explores the possibility of life as a tree. Beautifully illustrated this book would be a great story starter for a variety of projects related to the environment, well-being, and a variety of educational topics.

The author, Dar Hosta, is not only a writer, but she is an illustrator who focuses on mixed media, particularly collage art.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This award winner Mother Earth and Her Children by Sybil Von Olfers, Sieglinde Schoen-Smith and illustrated by Jack Zipes shows how good quilt art can give new life to an old story. Since this book is a translation, it would also offer some excellent opportunities for  language teachers. Sieglinde Schoen-Smith used this German picture book, first published in 1906, to make a marvelous quilt celebrating life and overcoming adversity to win the coveted Best in Show award at the 2006 International Quilt Show at Houston, Texas.

For those teachers using the Six Traits of Writing, aka the Six Plus One, this book would be a superb choice to use for lessons or story starters practicing the trait Word Choice through the discovery and description of the details found in the illustrations. For these lessons, Mother Earth and Her Children could easily be used with students in the upper middle school level.

Here is a recent biography of the original author, the quilt artist who resurrected this book and the translator that relates their story:

Sibylle von Olfers is the author of Etwas von den Wurzelkindern and was an art teacher in East Prussia at the turn of the century as well as a member of the Catholic Order of St. Elizabeth. Sieglinde Schoen-Smith is a quilter whose quilted interpretation of Mother Earth and Her Children captured the coveted Best in Show award at the 2006 International Quilt Show in Houston. She lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Jack Zipes is the foremost expert on German folklore in the United States.

 
 
Another book, The Old Tree, written and illustrated by beloved children’s author Ruth Brown, received the 2008 Growing Good Kids Award.  The core of this story relates to the way in which the animals who share the habitat with the old tree, wonder why there is a big X painted on the tree and how they work together to find an answer.
 
 
 
 
Last, but not least, is the humorous story, When the Vegetables Ran Away, written by Jeffery L. Schatzer and illustrated by Jeffery Ebbeler. Through rhyming and alliterative questions, the will be drawn into this story.

Read along as Grandpa spins a tale about the night that all the plants in the garden get up and run away.