Q&A with Juanita Havill
Q: What inspired you to write Grow?
A: I was inspired by an article I read in the Utne Reader after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. The article mentioned a woman in the Twin Cities, who reacted to the ugliness of violence and hatred by saying that we could do better. She decided to start a community garden to get her diverse neighbors together and I thought, what a good and positive action to take. Knowing about gardens, I thought, what a commitment!
Q: What made you decide to write this book in verse? Have you always been a poet?
A: My first version of the story was in a picture book format with Berneetha as the main character. Then Kate began to take on a bigger role, and her self-expression took the form of poetry, much as mine did when I was twelve years old. In fact, I started making up poems when I was around six and have written poems ever since. Grow represents the first time I have created a narrative by linking poems. What a liberating experience! The poems gave me the freedom to say more between the lines than a novel would permit.
Q: Kate and Berneetha are an unorthodox pair of friends. Do you have friends in your life that are a bit unorthodox? Are any of the characters based on people you know?
A: Different, strange, weird, unusual, eccentric and unorthodox are words that I have heard others use to describe some of my friends and family members, and yes, even me. But what can I say? We are all different and if "unorthodox" means not following the rules, doesn't the definition depend upon who makes the rules? Although some of the characters in Grow may be inspired by people I have known—and I have been fortunate to have met several Berneethas in my life—they are truly fictional characters.
Q: Kate and her mother struggle with weight and body image issues. Is there a positive message in Grow that you hope to send to female readers?
A: In our society it is a rare teen or pre-teen girl or her mother who has never suffered from misgivings about her body image. The impossibly thin, long-legged version of female beauty regularly communicated to women and girls makes females anxious about their bodies. I've been there. I know from experience that this anxiety can undermine self-esteem, lead to preoccupation with appearance, with being accepted, and contribute to obsession with weight and eating disorders. Girls and women don't have to conform to such unreal expectations. A girl who accepts her body can get on with her life and, if she chooses, make more realistic goals regarding her body. This is not to ignore the very real health problems associated with obesity. Now don't get me started on the dangerous and potentially damaging footwear that prevailing fashions are trying to get women to wear.
Q: Why is gardening such an important theme to you? Are you a green thumb? Do you have a garden?
A: I think that what we do, especially when challenges are involved, teaches us about ourselves and about life. Gardens are particularly good places to learn about yourself. I love gardens—not just wandering through them and enjoying the fragrance and beauty and ripening vegetables and flavorful herbs—but also getting down on my knees and scooping the dirt with my bare hands, planting seedlings and patting the soil around their tender roots.
Whenever I have had a plot of land, I have tried to grow things. As an apartment dweller in cloudy Paris, I managed to sprout and grow a grapefruit seedling. In Minnesota, gardening was nearly effortless despite the short growing season, but I did have to dig in my roses for the deep freeze of winter. Moving to the Sonoran desert of Arizona presented a very different kind of gardening. What can you grow in a desert with summer temperatures well above 100 degrees? Citrus, actually, and pomegranates and roses. I was beginning to get the hang of it when we moved to the high grasslands of southeastern Arizona. I am experimenting with a walled garden to keep the deer and javelina from nibbling on my plants and for the first time have managed to keep spearmint from spreading all over the garden. I planted it in a shady corner and it never grows far from that corner because the intense sun shrivels the leaves whenever the plant creeps out of the shade.
To return to the main feature about Juanita, click here.
Reviews
Grow
Juanita Havill
Through bright and engaging verse, readers will meander through this story of a community garden and the people who grow together there. The community that develops around their project is shared with readers through 12-year-old Kate's observations that help to make her character both substantial and vulnerable at the same time. The characters build up much the way a plant grows, one detail showing itself at a time. The story flows quickly and even reluctant readers should be hooked before they know it. The issues of weight, diet, losing a beloved pet, and child abuse make their way into the story and allow many opportunities for discussion. There are pretty illustrations throughout, but since it isn't always a pretty story they often seem disconnected or superfluous. This does provide an opportunity for teachers to have students choose a verse and illustrate it in their own way. This book would work well for both whole-class work or in the hands of a student in need of a boost. The cover won't sell the book, though, so it will need word-of-mouth and some booktalks to get the ball rolling. Recommended. 2008, Peachtree Publishers, 144pp., $14.95 hc.. Ages 9 to 13. Reviewer: Genevieve Gallagher (Library Media Connection, September 2008).
Twelve-year-old Kate Sibley tells her what-I-did-last-summer story in a series of charming poems that capture the spirit of Berneetha, a larger-than-life adult friend and laid-off special education teacher, who decides to plant a community garden on a vacant urban lot. Berneetha involves Kate and Harlan, a "Graffiti gangster," to help her. Kate learns about social action, friendship, self-acceptance, and tolerance, as well as about plants, while the colorful, enthusiastic, and too-big Berneetha uses their garden to grow neighborhood unity, cooperation, and kindness among people of various ages, mental abilities, professions, economic means, and attitudes. By the end of the story, Harlan, betrayed by his abusive father and greatly missed by Kate, lives with his grandmother in Chicago; Berneetha's classroom receives renewed funding; and Kate starts the school year, looks forward to next summer's garden, and finds that Berneetha is her inspiration for writing poetry. Havill uses an appealing narrator to describe the neighborhood project and people. Whimsical illustrations, fast-moving narrative, and extensive white space make it a good choice for middle school female reluctant readers, but the story will appeal to motivated readers as well. Like the more sophisticated, multiview Seedfolks (HarperCollins, 1997), it drives home the importance of positive personal action in effecting community change. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P M (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8). 2008, Peachtree, 160p.; Illus., $14.95. Ages 11 to 14. Reviewer: Lucy Schall (VOYA, April 2008 (Vol. 31, No. 1)).
ISBN: 978-1-5614-5441-9
Added 1/27/2009
To stay up to date on new books by this author, consider subscribing to The Children's Literature Comprehensive Database. For your free trial, click here.
If you're interested in reviewing children's and young adult books, then send a resume and writing sample to marilyn@childrenslit.com.