The Curious Garden by: Peter Brown

This is a fun story that has a clear and important message.....that sometimes even the smallest efforts made by one person can make a huge impact on other people in your community or even the world. "The Curious Garden" is about a little boy who lives in a dreary city that has no green life at all. He explores and finds this little patch of green grass and plant life by an old rail road track. He decides to be a gardener and starts watering it, and helps the green patch grow. Eventually the plant life spreads throughout the city. The gardening is contagious. People start to garden and have their own plants as well.

This book is good for many reasons. Our world right now is in desperate need of attention. This book is age appropriate for young kids because it allows us to spread this message in a way that they can understand it. The message is that we need to start cleaning up our environment and "be green" conscious so that we can protect and replenish our natural resources. It also is a good book because of the other important theme that is happening..... that one person can make all the difference by doing simple and small things. It doesn't just have to be about being environment friendly. It could be about helping the poor, or saving an animal, reading to a younger kid to help them read etc. This book teaches about social action and how contagious it is when you help someone or something in your world. This is a book that I will definitely use in my classroom because it has so many different teaching elements that you can talk and discuss with students.