Review By: Jim Whiting
The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough tells the story of a young girl in Honduras who helps her family and community gain greater food security by practicing new farming methods. This fictionalized story is based on the life of a real family in Honduras, as well as that of a Honduran teacher who helped tens of thousands of families learn to increase their food production and care for their land.
The Good Garden raises kids’ awareness of the important global issue of food security (one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals to end poverty by 2015). Seventy-five percent of the poor in developing countries are struggling farmers like the ones in the book. Without goods from their farms, not only might they not have enough food to put on their tables, they can’t even pay for necessities such as medical treatment or clothing. Milway’s book shows the chain reaction of how the teacher affected one family, who in turn taught the village, which helped the community flourish.
The Good Garden features a glossary as well as information about world hunger and nonprofit organizations that help poor farmers. Kids can learn how they too can make a difference by volunteering, fundraising, creating their own gardens and/or taking political action.
The Good Garden shows that no matter what the age you can make a difference and help family members and others. Everyone has a skill or something they are good at, and those skills can be put to good use. Grandparents specifically have so much to share with the young and this book shows how the teachings of one person effected so many.
Title: The Good Garden: How One Family Went from Hunger to Having Enough
Publisher: Kids Can Press
Pub. date: September
Genre: Non-Fiction
Page count: 32 pages
Ages: 7 and up
Price: $18.95
Links to sample chapter, reviews, or website: www.thegoodgarden.org and www.onehen.opportunity.org
Author Katie Smith Milway is a non-profit consultant who has coordinated community development programs in Latin America and Africa for Food for the Hungry International and was a delegate to the 1992 Earth Summit. She is author of the award-winning Kids Can Press children’s book One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference and co-founder of One Hen Inc., a nonprofit organization that uses microfinance stories, interactive games and downloadable classroom resources to give children experience in financial responsibility and giving back. Katie’s adult book on sustainable development, The Human Farm: A Tale of Changing Lives and Changing Lands, documents the work of Don Elías Sanchez and Milton Flores. Don Elías is the model for the teacher in The Good Garden.
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Kids Author of the Month: The best in children’s literature, selected by Jim WhitingJim Whiting is the author of more than 100 nonfiction books for children. He has edited many other books for young people, including picture books, chapter books and nonfiction. He also enjoys working with adults who are writing memoirs and other works.
For more information about Jim, please see www.jimwhiting.com. Many of his books may be purchased directly, and include a personalized inscription. For availability of specific titles or to send a comment, write him atjimruns3@gmail.com |