PPBF – My Baba’s Garden

As the harvest season is coming to an end in much of the country, I’m happy to feature a Perfect Picture Book that showcases gardening and so much more.

Title: My Baba’s Garden

Written By: Jordan Scott

Illustrated By: Sydney Smith

Publisher/Date: Neal Porter Books/2023

Suitable for Ages: 4-8

Themes/Topics: intergenerational, gardening, transitions

Opening:

My Baba lives in a chicken coop beside a highway, behind a sulfur mill shaped like an Egyptian pyramid, bright yellow like a sun that never goes to sleep.

Brief Synopsis:

When the young narrator’s grandmother moves from her home with a large garden and into the narrator’s home, he seeks to recreate a small part of that garden outside her bedroom window.

Links to Resources:

• Create a container garden to grow some of your favorite flowers and vegetables;
• Make breakfast foods together;
• Baba collects worms to add to her garden. Discover why earthworms help enrich soil.

Why I Like this Book:

My Baba’s Garden paints a lovely picture of the magic that ensues when a young child spends time with an aging grandparent, even when, as in this story, the two speak different languages and communicate nonverbally.

As the story begins, Baba inhabits what to many readers may seem a strange house: a chicken coop near a mill. She fills it with food grown in her large and beautiful garden and lovingly feeds the unnamed narrator each morning. Because she has lived there as long as the young narrator has known her, he doesn’t view the living arrangements as unusual. This, I think, is a valuable opportunity to discuss with children living arrangements that differ from theirs.

Baba fills her home with food stored everywhere. I love how the narrator offers a brief explanation about the food. His mom had told him that “Baba didn’t have very much food for a long, long time.” Again, this is a wonderful opportunity to discuss differing life experiences.

Baba also walks slowly when it rains to hunt for worms for her garden, a valuable lesson about using proven gardening methods and what’s at hand.

But as the story unfolds, Baba has to leave her chicken coop house to make way for a “big building”. Roles reverse. While at the outset Baba feeds the narrator, now the narrator brings breakfast to his Baba. He also plants seeds, finding worms and adding them to the soil, just as she had taught him. What a lovely reversal and sign that proven old ways can endure if we pay attention to our wise elderly relatives and neighbors.

Smith’s gorgeous gouache and watercolor illustrations complement Jordan’s poetic text. Smith and Jordan also collaborated on the award-winning picture book, I Talk Like a River.

A Note about Craft:

In a Foreword, Scott recounts the history of his own Baba, who lived in Poland during World War II. He describes the times during his childhood that he spent with his Baba in the chicken coop where she lived. Clearly much of My Baba’s Garden is based on his childhood memories and the importance Scott’s Baba played in his life.

This Perfect Picture Book entry is being added to Susanna Hill’s Perfect Picture Book list. Check out the other great picture books featured there!