Seed

Caryl Lewis's Seed is a warm, bittersweet story for 10 year olds about a boy, his grandad and one very unusual birthday present.

What happens

Marty's house is so full of stuff you can barely move. There are piles of newspapers, broken radiators, stacks of old window frames. His mum keeps everything, sleeps a lot and hardly ever leaves the house. So Marty does the shopping, cooks the pies and keeps his own bedroom clear by pushing the bags back out.

His escape is Grandad's allotment. Every evening after school they sit outside the shed drinking tea so sweet you could live off it. Grandad spreads buckets of rotten fish guts on the soil and invents things that don't quite work (the automatic tea stirrer was a disaster).

His mum forgets his birthday. Grandad doesn't, and he gives Marty a small brown envelope. Inside is one seed. It's big and plump and stripy like a pair of pyjamas, and Grandad won't say what it is. When Marty pushes it into the soil he's sure he sees it glow, and his fingers are still tingling afterwards. Less than a week later, it's already growing.

At school he meets Gracie. She's deaf, she can lip-read the names he mutters at the bullies, and she tells him he has "the social skills of a baked bean". It takes a while, but they end up friends (sort of).

The chapters start with little lists of what people own. Seven teeth. 457 tea bags. One mother who wouldn't leave the house. They're funny and sad at the same time, which is exactly how the whole book feels.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Marty's mum is clearly not well, and her hoarding is at the centre of the story. A council letter says the house has to be cleared within a week. Bullies film Marty when he's knocked off his bike and shout cruel things about his mum, and he ends up punching one of them. His dad left when he was four.

For a child who's living with a grown-up who's struggling, that might feel very close to home. It might also be quite a comfort to see it written down so kindly. If your reader likes stories with real feelings in them and a thread of magic running through, this is a really special one.

What to read next

For another boy whose favourite person is his grandad, try Grandpa's Great Escape. Jack is shy and happiest with his model planes, and his grandpa, who flew a Spitfire in the war, has started to believe he's still flying one.