Planting a Seed Inside Myself
Planting a Seed Books; 1st Edition (2013)
Reviewed by Emilee Summers (age 12), Alyvia Summers (age 5) and Mom for Reader Views (12/13)
“Planting a Seed inside Myself” by Juliana Mendonca is a book of many things. For younger children it is a beautiful picture book, for pre-teens it is a story of how to make good choices in life and just to be happy with who you are. My mom liked the way the story was written so that it was easy to explain to children the difference between making the right choices and wrong choices in life.
As I started reading “Planting a Seed inside Myself” to my little sister I used the brightly colored pictures to explain the story to her. Each page talked about a different problem or situation you might face on a daily basis and how to make the right choices. The author would describe a trait as a seed and how to help good seeds grow and discourage the growth of bad ones. The story was a vision of a garden inside you and how to help the good plants, like willingness and generosity, grow and selecting plants to grow inside you that make us feel, and act the right way. Traits like selfishness, disorder and impatience are considered weeds and can affect our lives in a negative way. So by tending to your garden inside yourself you can be a happier, more productive person.
I found “Planting a Seed inside Myself” to be a helpful book on how to work out a problem by looking inside yourself to see if how you are acting is the right way to deal with a situation or problem. When reading it to my sister she was easily distracted and even though she liked the brightly colored pictures, I think she would have found the story more interesting if the story line was more of a children’s story then a self-help book. The author has a great way of talking to children through words, she just needs to include a story that will keep a child’s interest and then this could be a really good book.