The Tiny Seed: With seeded paper to grow your own flowers! (The World of Eric Carle)
The Tiny Seed: With seeded paper to grow your own flowers! (The World of Eric Carle) book cover

The Tiny Seed: With seeded paper to grow your own flowers! (The World of Eric Carle)

Hardcover – March 10, 2009

Price
$8.09
Format
Hardcover
Pages
36
Publisher
Little Simon
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1416979173
Dimensions
5 x 0.3 x 7 inches
Weight
4.8 ounces

Description

In autumn, a strong wind blows flower seeds high in the air and carries them far across the land. One by one, many of the seeds are lost -- burned by the sun, fallen into the ocean, eaten by a bird. But some survive the long winter and, come spring, sprout into plants, facing new dangers -- trampled by playing children, picked as a gift for a friend. Soon only the tiniest seed remains, growing into a giant flower and, when autumn returns, sending its own seeds into the wind to start the process over again. Eric Carle (1929–2021) was acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated and innovatively designed picture books for very young children, including Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me ; Have You Seen My Cat? ; and The Tiny Seed . His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar , has been translated into seventy languages and sold over fifty-five million copies. Carle illustrated more than seventy books, many bestsellers, most of which he also wrote, and more than 170 million copies of his books have sold around the world. In 2003, Carle received the Children’s Literature Legacy Award for lifetime achievement in children's literature. In 2002, Eric and his wife, Barbara, cofounded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (CarleMuseum.org) in Amherst, Massachusetts, a 40,000-square-foot space dedicated to the celebration of picture books and picture book illustrations from around the world, underscoring the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of picture books and their art form. Eric Carle passed away in May 2021 at the age of ninety-one. His work remains an important influence on artists and illustrators at work today. Find out more at Eric-Carle.com.

Features & Highlights

  • Eric Carle’s classic story of the life cycle of a flower is told through the adventures of a tiny seed. This mini-book includes a piece of detachable seed-embedded paper housed on the inside front cover. Readers can plant the entire piece of paper and watch as their very own tiny seeds grow into beautiful wildflowers.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(1.7K)
★★★★
25%
(692)
★★★
15%
(415)
★★
7%
(194)
-7%
(-194)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

This is SMALL, not normal size hardcover

Pay attention to the product dimensions! I assumed this was the size of a typical hardcover children's picture book. It's not. The book itself is fine and I don't have a problem with anything other than I don't think it's made clear in the product description what you're actually ordering. When it says "hardcover," I would think most people assume it's an average-sized hardcover book, not a mini version of it. Just wanted people to be aware in case the size matters to you. In my case, it DID matter because I bought this for reading aloud to a large group of preschoolers, and they aren't going to be able to see the pictures very well because it's so small.
43 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

NO SEEDS

Great book, BUT.... I purchased 6 of them for gifts and they ALL came without the seeded paper. Very disappointing. Amazon sant me a replacement for all the 6 books and now all 12 have no seeds
35 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Seeds NOT incuded

I am very disappointed in this product. The main attraction was the seed-embedded paper 'included' in the book......the paper was NOT included. I ordered 2 books for my grandchildren's birthdays to go with gardening items. It was going to be lots of fun to plant the seeds and watch them grow. I guess I'll have to go purchase seeds separately even though inside the front cover and on the back of the book it mentions the 'detachable' seed paper. Grammie Mc
26 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Horrible Eric Carle book. What happened to his quality?

I am a big Eric Carle fan, and am stunned and saddened that he would put his name on this book.

1.) It does not portray the life cycle of a seed correctly at all. I would definitely not use this in the classroom, or as a tool to teach my child about seeds/plants. (Seeds don't catch on fire by flying too close to the sun, and flowers don't grow taller than houses in my neighborhood.) 2.) It is not good for pre-schoolers. Don't laugh, but it's too violent. All these seeds are killed off one by one -- frozen, burned, eaten, drowned. 3.) The lackluster illustrations are not up to the standard we expect from Eric Carle. 4.) Lastly, I'm not sure how more adequately I can describe this book than by just saying, "This is one really weird book."

It appears to have gotten some good reviews, so it might be a fit for some people out there. But, in my own opinion, it seems to me as though it was slapped together on a tight deadline, and with the thinking that by simply putting the Eric Carle name on it, people would buy it. (Unfortunate people like me.) Stick with the tried-and-true "Hungry Caterpillar" and "Brown Bear" classics if you want Eric Carle. And look elsewhere if you want a book that teaches kids about the life cycle of plants, like "This is the Sunflower" or "Bob and Otto."
20 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Don't buy this. If you did, return it. If you can't, recycle it.

We read books by the dozens with our preschooler. We've enjoyed many of Eric Carle's classic titles (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear) but this one is awful. It's highly inaccurate, from the empirical standpoint, and has nothing to do with how a seed germinates. Beyond that, it's horrendous. The other seeds suffer horrible deaths until only this one is left - it's more like Stephen King's The Long Walk than a preschooler book. 1984 is more cheerful.

Carle has diluted his brand in a really awful fashion in recent years. Now he's jumped the shark.
10 people found this helpful
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Perfect preparation for child's first gardening experience

Eric Carle's book was a hit with my 3-yr old granddaughter. We had fun planting the accompanying seeds (pressed into a card for easy handling and planting). I rounded out her birthday gift package with a little gardening tool set and a pair of garden gloves. It was a hit! Even though she wanted to dig up the seeds and replant them (because it was fun the first time, why not do it again?!), it was a wonderful introduction to gardening, a rewarding and lifelong activity for Nana.
6 people found this helpful
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The Tiny Seed book with NO SEEDS!

There were no seeds. The "detachable seed-embedded paper" was not in the book.

Cute book but it loses its appeal when it does not have what I specifically wanted out of this purchase. It would have been a nice little project to go along with the story.

Fail.

Can I have a $1.50 credit? Since I now need to go purchase some tiny seeds?
6 people found this helpful
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Great Story, but Format Isn’t Ideal

It wasn’t clear that this book was paper pages. The pages are very thin, so a small child (even one who is careful) could accidentally rip the pages. Disappointing.

But I love the story, and my daughter does too; we’ve been reading this to her since she was 6 months old!
5 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Smaller than expected

I love this book it arrived quickly but I must admit I expected it to be bigger but since I teach Prek, I am sure it will be okay. Also I was pleased to see it came with a seed paper to grow flowers but it only came with one so a little sad.
3 people found this helpful
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It’s got a spot on our shelves

I bought this book to add to our spring literature shelf at home. It isn’t my favorite Eric Carle title but we will keep it all the same. The children enjoy it so I suppose that matters more than how I may feel about it.

The seed paper is a nice touch and we are looking forward to planting it to see what grows once the weather warms a little.
3 people found this helpful