Seedfolks
Paul Fleischman (1997)
“Thirteen strangers in a Cleveland neighborhood discover that a vacant lot full of garbage can become a garden — and that planting seeds means planting trust.”
Characters in Seedfolks
by Paul Fleischman · 1997 · 13 characters analyzed
Cast: Kim, Ana, Wendell, Gonzalo, Leona, Sam, Virgil, Sae Young, Curtis, Nora, Maricela, Amir, Florence.
Character Analysis
The nine-year-old Vietnamese girl who starts everything by planting six lima beans to honor her dead father. She appears only in the first chapter but her act of planting sets the entire chain reaction in motion. She is the novel's 'seedfolk' — the first settler of new ground — and her motive (grief, connection to an absent parent) establishes the garden's emotional register before any communal purpose develops.
Simple declarative sentences, concrete nouns, no abstraction. The voice of a nine-year-old processing an adult concept (grief) with a child's directness.