The Bad Seed by Jory JohnMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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THE BAD SEED
BY JORY JOHN
PUBLISHED BY: HARPER COLLINS CHILDREN’S BOOKS
YEAR 2017
AGES: 4+
GRADES: P+
PAGES:
WORDS: 40
P1: Copyright
P2: Title Page
P3: I’m a bad seed.
P4: A baaaaaaaad seed.
P5: Oh yeah. It’s true. The other sees they look at me, and they say. “That seed is SO bad!”
P6: “When they think I’m not listening, they mumble, “There goes a baaaaaaad seed.”
P7: But I can hear them. I have good hearing for a seed.
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| Author Jory John |
To me this suggests that Jory John is a well established writer with a good relationship with the publisher. I don’t for sure. But I’ll do more research on him.
It’s also interesting to note that our narrator character can hear people calling him a bad seed. It reinforces his badness in his own mind. People call me bad therefore it must be true. The way you behave affects how people retreat you, and the way people treat you affects how you behave. This is another book, like Night Gardner, where society as a whole is a character in the story.
P8: How bad am I?”
P9: You really want to know?
P10: Well . . . I never put things back where they belong. I’m late to everything. I tell long jokes with no punch lines.
P11: I never wash my hands. Or my feet. I lie about pointless stuff. I cut in line. Every time.
P12: I star at everybody. I glare at everybody. I finish everybody’s sentences. And I never listen.
And I do lots of other bad things, too. Know why? Because I’m a bad seed.
P13: A baaaaaaaad seed.
Help me out here. Would we consider this the end of Act I way down here on page 13? Or is this the end of Act
II Part 1 and the beginning of Act II part 2? Do to the shift in rhythm from listing the “bad” deeds to telling the narrator’s backstory I’m inclined to go with the later -Act II with two parts. Leave your opinion in the comments.
P14: I just can’t help it. Sure, I wasn’t always this bad. I was born a humble seed, on a simple sunflower, in an unremarkable field.
P15: I had a big family. Seeds everywhere. We found ways of having fun. We were close.
P16: But then the petals dropped. And our flower drooped. It’s kind of a blur.
P17: I remember a bag.
P18: Everything went dark . . .
P19: . . . And then . . . Then . . .
P20 - P21: A giant!
P22: I thought I was a goner . . . I thought I was a done for . . . I screamed and hollered. AAAAAhhhh!!!
P23: ptooooo! But I was spit out at the last possible second.
P24: I flew through the air, and I landed under the bleachers with a huge thud. THUD!
P25: When I woke up, it was dark outside. A wad of gum had softened my fall. I felt ok. But something had changed in me. I’d become a different seen entirely. I’d become a bad seed.
As a kid I had a tendency to personify everything. This would have made me concerned for the welling being of roasted sunflower seeds. And I alone this? Idk. But reading it without the the illustrations is just as dramatic and interesting to me as reading it with the pictures. The pacing and energy are spot on.
P26: A baaaaad seed.
P27: That’ right. I stopped smiling. I kept to myself. I drifted. I was friend to nobody and bad to everybody. I was lost on purpose. I lived inside a soda can. I didn’t care and it suited me.
P28: Until recently. I’ve made a big decision. I’ve decided I don’t want to be a bad seed anymore. I’m ready to be happy. It’s hard to be good when you’re so used to being bad. But I’m trying. I’m taking it one day at a time.
A change in the character marks the beginning of our Act III. In two scenes we know why the narrator thinks he’s bad, how be became this way, and why society treats him as though he is “a bad seed”. We know now that he’s really not all that bad, just rude.
Usually in a story about a redemption character the writer offers some clue as to what led the character’s decision to change. This doesn’t give us any reason at all and I’m curious about that. I imagine John wrote the reason, but it was cut during the editing process. The story is a decent length without it, but it is what I expect a story like this to be all about. Moving on!
P30 Sure, I still forget to listen. And I still show up late. And I still talk during movies. And I do all kinds of other bad stuff.
P31: But I also say thank you. And I say please. And I smile. And I hold doors open for people. Not always. But sometimes.
I love that the seed doesn’t go from being bad to just easily being the best guy ever. People I’ve met who appear to be this way are so fake. It’s hard to break a habit of rudeness so a sudden change for the better is not genuine. It is so important for kids and adults to recognize that fact of life.
P32: And even though I still feel bad, sometimes, I also feel kind of good. It’s sort of a mix. All I can do I keep trying and keep thinking, maybe I’m not such a bad seed after all.
P33: “Hey, look there goes that bad seed . . . . “ “Actually, he’s not all that bad anymore.”
P34: “I heard that.”
This part is important too because society reflects us back to ourselves. If no one recognizes the effort someone is making to reform it makes that reform so much harder. Also, since society is a character in this story it’s important to show they are changing too as the narrator character changes.
MY TAKE AWAY
All in all a great message with interesting pacing choices. While looking up more information about this book I gleaned the word traumatized and understood better what the story was about. The poor guy lost his family and nearly died. He ended up hurt and alone and became “bad” as a matter of self-defense. As I mentioned the climax of the story usually gives some clue as what causes the turn about, usually a new love or a new friend, or realizing that your hurt is hurting others. But this doesn’t give us that. The runtime on the story is already pretty long, and I suppose the writer might have found that cliche. So instead our character just turns over a new leaf on his own and we as the public only get that he’s trying to ease up on the badness.
This led me to wondering how many times in life have we encountered a person who is trying to be good but no one recognizes it because they didn’t see the change happen themselves? How many times do we as a society refuse to let someone we know has been bad in the past redeem themselves? We often want to protect ourselves from liars but you never know what someone is going through. This story encourages us to be observant and to give credit where credit is due.
Bedtime Breakdown
As usual, reading it out loud to my daughter introduced a whole new perspective on the book that I hadn’t considered with all my adult braining about the story and it’s pacing. That is I realized that it’s a very fun book to read!
The baaaaaad seed parts, the sunflower drooping, the dark, the giant, and a chance to use other voices to talk for the other seeds all made reading it fun, and for her funny. It was also kind of emotional. My daughter reacted with interest and sympathy during the telling of the seed’s back story. And she smiled when the seed was doing nice things that she recognized such as saying “please” and “thank you”.
I explained the parts were the other seeds were scared of the narrator. I also pointed out where the bad seed was scared in the dark. And how he was sad, so sad he didn’t even know that he was sad. It’s great how so many books are teaching emotional awareness these days.
All in all a great book.
If you like this story you might like to know that it’s one in a series. Check it and the others out at your local library or support the author Jory John by purchasing it from your favorite local bookstore! You can learn more about Jory John by clicking here.
And if you like these breakdowns and want participate please leave a comment down below. All feedback is welcome! Thank you for stopping by . This has been Porsche B. Yeary. I’ll see you on the next page!