Sidewalk Flowers

by JonArno Lawson and Sydney Smith

A little girl dressed in a red hoodie walks through black-and-white city streets... read more

A little girl dressed in a red hoodie walks through black-and-white city streets with her father, who is talking incessantly on his cell phone for most of their walk. He doesn’t see what his daughter sees along the way—small touches of color in the occasional flowers that grow up through sidewalk cracks or by the foundations of buildings. She picks them as they walk. Once she has a nice bouquet of subtly colored blossoms, she leaves them, one by one, where they are needed: next to a dead bird, a sleeping homeless man, a dog on a leash. As a result of her small acts of kindness, we see her world begin to fill with color. Once she gets home, everything is in color. She even has a few flowers remaining to give her mother and brothers. Simple yet sophisticated, this is a story that will stay with the reader long after the book is closed. (Ages 4–10)

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2016

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