Interview with Michael J. Rosen, editor of Down to Earth – Garden Secrets! Garden Stories! Garden Projects You Can Do!

Years ago, I could not find a way to address financially, or through what skills I had, some of the profound and ongoing social predicaments, for instance, poverty, environmental issues, or animal welfare. I kept coming up short, and whatever attempts I made were not fulfilling. Then Share Our Strength, an anti-hunger and anti-poverty organization, asked if I would contribute a story to a book with twenty-two stories total. The more I learned about Share Our Strength, the more I knew that here was a door where before I had perceived a wall. It takes all kinds of people with all sorts of talents to address any cause we might face.

Now with my book projects, hundreds of people have the chance to move out of the mode of feeling overwhelmed or put upon, and are able instead to give personally, by a poem or picture, sharing their experience or traditions or memories within a book. This has inspired others, and continues to inspire me. I hope teachers, parents, and children can use these books for their own purposes and inspiration.

In Down to Earth, the message goes beyond how nice it is to plant a garden. We have forty voices that say, within the cliche of the word “garden,” we can find our personal histories, our own identities. Most people share many experiences in common. But when you refract those through the voices of talented people, you see how many original and singular moments are held in those common events. Of course, the social value of a book like Down to Earth can include the example of community gardens, activities that people can actually do with growing things, and the simple and primary joy of sharing what you have grown, harvested, cooked, or rendered in some way. And everything I do for kids I hope has a message of contagion in that they too can take on the same charge. I hope kids will think, “What would I pick as my favorite plant?” “What is a meaningful natural object in my world?" And then hear a child say something like, “It's milkweed pods or my grandma’s rhubarb plants for me!”

What can children do? Use the book as a survey of contemporary authors and illustrators for a creative springboard, where everybody picks a plant or flower, or imitates a writer to find a unique voice. Try to do what Judy Sierra does, making a list of the coolest things (facts, legends, history, growing tips) about mustard seeds, or what if you were shrunk, as Adam McCauley imagines himself in his picture, to the size of ivy leaves. Use any of the book’s entries as imaginative paradigms.

Words can become more than letters on the page. Too often creative writing becomes only, "he took my idea," or "I did it, I'm done," a race to finish work. When kids use more than short term memory, and have play with their words, they are involved and invested. Years ago I was at a state park on a walk with a class, and a kid was looking at the ground and putting his hands around his face like horse blinders. “What are you doing, John?” a kid asked. “Don't look at anything. The teacher will make you write about it later.” Writing isn’t about filling an ice-cube tray with water and dumping out cubes. It’s making ice sculpture.

Children can do a unit and have to spell “stem” and “pistil” and “xylem” and repeat the definitions on a test. Instead, what if children were to use their vocabulary words to invent a flower or a fruit? By combining memory and imagination they use a different part of the brain. Then if kids turn what they are learning into action, to contribute something, they cement the experience into lifelong pride, a sense of self-esteem, and wisdom.

Use these ideas to find what is available in your community, and discover what can be done with modest budgets and person power. Ask, “What does this inspire us to do?” Classrooms can make a book of recipes or things to make with plants and donate money to community gardens. Children can plant native seeds, do a hunger action project, or create something useful for a local senior center. In other words, let kids use their information, then they retain it!

How do you inspire social action? Allow kids to personalize their experiences rather than march to the beat of built-in prompts, and predictable expectation. There is a pleasure to be taken as we let kids perform as themselves, sharing their own strengths: to experiment, invent, create, and claim a sense of real joy.

On a personal note, it’s daunting to think that kids are going to take my books not just home to read, but to heart. I often pause at the typewriter considering the nature of this responsibility. It doesn’t just inspire me, it makes me aspire, revisit all my passions and commitments and ideas that I presume kids are going to like, and then to reexamine them further, hoping that, in fact, these are worthy enough.