I wrote this book because Grace Maccarone, my editor and friend at Scholastic, asked me to write an easy-to-read science series. "I'm a Seed" was the first title. Grace and I like to share stories about our children. She told me one day that as she was driving her daughter and her daughter's friend one day, she was listening to them talk about their respective summer vacations. If one said she had done something wonderful, the other one said she had done something even better. This went on for a while until the kids got bored and moved on to another topic. For some reason, their conversation came up in my mind when I started the book about seeds. I gave them kids' voices and even had them compete a little. Kids can be different, and seeds can be different, too. As one seed says at the end of the book, "There should be a name for it." To which the other seed says, "There is. It's called life."

Two seeds in the soil are speaking to each other. "I'm a seed!" they both say. One knows it's a marigold, but the other doesn't know what it is. Each plant grows leaves, then flowers, and when the mystery seed grows big and round and orange, the riddle is solved. The clever text weaves facts about plants into the story, and the beautiful collages show a host of wildlife for readers to identify. This is a wonderful introduction to a plant's life cycle.

“A simple, yet imaginative discussion between a marigold seed and a pumpkin seed. Judith Moffatt's striking collage illustrations add another layer of clarity to the tale.”
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