The transformative life cycle of a sunflower plays out in this bold read-aloud by Sibert honoree Antoinette Portis.

“A seed falls,
And settles into the ground,
And the Sun shines,
And the rain comes down,
And the seed grows…”

To understand how a seed becomes a sunflower, you have to peek beneath the soil and wait patiently as winding roots grow, a stalk inches out of the earth, and new seeds emerge among blooming petals.

With evocative and lively illustrations, A Seed Grows offers a close-up view of each step of this process and the ways in which flowers and seeds depend on other creatures, with a striking fold-out spread of a full-grown sunflower and additional material at the back of the book explaining the science of plant life cycles.

Antoinette Portis is the author of A New Green Day, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and NCTE Notable Book in Poetry, as well as the Sibert Honor winning Hey, Water!

Further information about sunflowers. “Life Cycle of a Sunflower Plant.” Suggested further reading. Full-color illustrations were created using various printmaking techniques.

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