A graphic novel about a young girl, Luz, who lives in the city. Luz decides that the old, abandon lot down the street is the perfect spot for a community garden and park. She gathers friends and neighbors to help make the dream of a community park come true.
Sepia toned panels. A bit preachy, but overall a good message about environmental stewardship. Practical advice on how to start a compost pile is also given in a seperate section at the end of the story.
The first thing I noticed were the beautiful illustrations in this book. It is was initially drew my attention.
Secondly, I was drawn in by the message described on the back pages. Here I learned about an organization called ENO (Environment Online) that helps spread awareness and knowledge about sustainable development. This online environment allows students around the world to share their learning with our global community. This piqued my curiosity and thought this would be a wonderful resource for teachers and students.
And lastly, once again from the back page, I learned that this story is a well-known children’s play that has been performed in over eighty countries.
With all these positive attributes, I felt I really should have liked this book more; however, I found it to be choppy and unremarkable. It is easy to envision this as a play by the way it is written, but it makes for stilted reading. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but as I was reading through this I couldn’t help but feel as if the dialogue is something that the students themselves would have created. For this reason, I think students may like it as a play, but will have a difficult time being engaged for reading pleasure.
