Grow: A Novel in Verse

This verse novel about the creation of a community garden reveals the extraordinary magic that occurs when ordinary people work together.

Everything about Berneetha is big--especially her dreams. And when Berneetha decides to create a garden on a vacant lot, twelve-year-old Kate Sibley just has to help make that dream a reality. At first the neighbors think Kate and Berneetha are crazy, but slowly a community begins to grow, much like the plants do.

But just as the garden and Kate are both beginning to bloom, a sign goes up: a parking garage will be built on the lot. Can Kate and Berneetha and their friends keep the garden and the dream alive?

Award-winning author Juanita Havill’s story of a community garden in an urban neighborhood is told through the eyes of an impressionable girl in a series of richly detailed prose poems. The result is an affecting, lasting portrait of community life and the power of shared commitment and hope.

Juanita Havill was born in Indiana and grew up in Illinois. She is the author of more than thirty books for children, including Jamaica’s Find, which received the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award. She lives and gardens in Arizona.

Stanislawa Kodman is known best by her cats, who say she spends way too much time drawing, playing with letterforms, and watching movies, instead of entertaining them during their few waking minutes. The pressures of a muse are great, but such is the life of a cat. She lives in Georgia.