Ellen Mainville

A Garden For Grace Ellen Mainville

A Garden For Grace - an art-book quality book of poems and drawings, written and illustrated by Ellen Mainville. For children from five to ninety-five.

Imagine a farm: Dad in the fields, Mom busy in the kitchen, and Grandma planting and weeding in her extensive flower beds. They are gardens she's created through many years, in every available space of her domain. She now has the leisure to putter, "me" time she could only steal in snatches as a busy farm-wife and mother. But what are gardens and leisure time without someone to share them?

Along comes a little girl for Grandma to watch and to care for: a girl who also learns to love and care for Grandma's flowers-and who learns about life and love at the skilled hands of the wise old woman. The girl grows up, her parents retire, the farm is sold. The girl becomes a mother, then a grandmother herself. The descendants of Grandma's plants still live, transplanted to her own gardens. Grandma's lessons live too: in her memories, passed down to her own children, to grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and friends, and now to us all in her artwork and poems...