A Seed Grows

See the transformative life cycle of a sunflower play out from page to page in this bold read-aloud by Sibert honoree Antoinette Portis.

"A seed falls,

And settles into the ground,

And the Sun shines,

And the rain comes down,

And the seed grows..."



To understand how a seed becomes a sunflower, you have to peek beneath the soil and wait patiently as winding roots grow, a stalk inches out of the earth, and new seeds emerge among blooming petals. With evocative and lively illustrations, A Seed Grows offers a close-up view of each step of this process and the ways in which flowers and seeds depend on other creatures, with a striking fold-out spread of a full-grown sunflower and additional material at the back of the book explaining the science of plant life cycles. Antoinette Portis is the author of A New Green Day, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and NCTE Notable Book in Poetry, as well as the Sibert Honor winning Hey, Water!