Seed was so much fun there was nods to Jack and the Beanstalk and to James and the Giant Peach but more importantly it was about hope and how magical hope can be.

Our two main characters Marty who has a Mum who is a hoarder which I have not seen ever in a Middle Grade and Gracie who is Deaf and wants to dance and for me Caryl dealt with both stories beautifully and sympathetically.

For me the message was whatever you dream about just keep dreaming and hoping and you never know they may come true.

For all the above Seed receives 4 stars

A fabulously fun adventure where Marty, his grandfather and his friend Gracie plant a seed and follow their dreams.

Marty has quite a tough time. His mum isn't very well, and at school he's being picked on. He does enjoy spending time with his granddad, who is the only one who remembers his birthday. But his present is just one seed in a brown envelope.

Marty and his grandfather plant the seed in the allotment, and with Marty's new friend Gracie they look after the ground and wait for the seed to grow.

The grandfather has big plans for this seed when it's fully grown. He believes it will make dreams come true and take them on an amazing journey across the sea to Paris and home again.

This is such a rich book.

It has a fabulous story and a tremendous adventure. It celebrates friendship and community. It brings hope and the belief that dreams can come true. And it encourages us to plant seeds. 

It also touches on some difficult subjects - bullying, deafness, poverty, broken families, hoarding, mental illness, child carers. Yet all these things are lightly and sensitively handled. 

A wonderful, uplifting, entertaining and inspiring book. Loved it!

Marty's mum is a bit of a hoarder. There is stuff everywhere.
Things will soon change and there is an adventure, a magic adventure waiting for Marty and his friend.
This was a great read and lovely illustrations.
full of love and magic this adventure is not to be missed.

Caryl Lewis is another new author for me. I could not resist the amazing cover!

I really loved this story. The characters are great. They’re all well-rounded and feel real. They all have their difficulties, but they work to overcome them.

I loved the plot, it’s like a modern day fairy tale. It’s so unexpected, and slightly crazy, but utterly brilliant. I can’t really say much more without spoilers, so you’ll have to read it to find out!

Oh, and the illustrations are marvellous. I especially love the one of the shed at the beginning of each chapter.

Overall, this was a brilliant story that was just so much fun. It reminds us all to keep believing in ourselves. I’ll certainly be looking out for more books from this author.

I was given a free copy of this book, my opinions are my own.

What a lovely book. The entire family enjoyed this story It was such fun but very heartwarming. The story follows two children with their own problems / challenges but all ends well. It is madcap in places. My grandchildren are all desperate to grow things in the garden now. Read the book to find out why.

Marty has two parental figures in his life, and they both might be thought of as complete embarrassments. His grandfather runs an allotment, and manages to stink the entire town out from it when he douses it in fish guts each spring to fertilise his vegetables. His mother somehow combines the dual roles of housebound failure and hoarder – while she seems to do nothing and hasn't left the building in years she has still managed to fill it to the brim with junk. What Marty's classmates don't know about this they can draw lines to from how poor Marty always looks, with his one school uniform built from lost property. We see him as once again the council threaten her and him with eviction, and as he celebrates his birthday with the gift from his grandfather of a solitary plant seed.

Now, this seed is of course completely important to the story, and in its "spectacularous", bonkers rate of growth and kind of electrical aura it gives off is by far the only unrealistic thing about it all (well, that and the complete lack of security at these allotments). Our author seems to have really got into the heads of elderly allotmenteers, manically hoarding housewives, and more, for early on here Marty gains a friend in the shape of Gracie, a deaf girl ignored too often by her single dad. Gracie's biggest wish is to become a dancer, and it was she that (alongside adding a bucketload of warmth to proceedings as the friendship formed in its inevitable way) made me feel a surprising reaction to this wonderful read, and surprisingly early on, too. I just got to more or less a third way through and said to myself 'this needs to be filmed'. Gracie wouldn't be the only deaf dancer on our TV screens now, but the representation she could offer would be wondrous.

All told this is a joy – lighthearted and classically whimsical when it needs to be, more contemporary and emotion-charging when called for. It seems picking something as transformative as that seen in Jack and the Beanstalk, and putting it in a modern, everyday context, is surprisingly effective, and where I may have predicted that having both Gracie's issues and those caused by Marty's mother would have been one set of topics too many, and bogged the piece down, everything is done in a light, non-preachy manner. Ultimately, it's just a wonderfully inventive story, with great verve in the telling, and a story you just have to hang on to every word of.

Okay, so I'm rather a lot older than the target audience but I thought this book was totally charming. It hooked me from the word go. It's everything I want in a book, whether that's an adult or a children's book: lovely characters, a decent plot and a touch of quirkiness.

Twitter is always debating something. Should children need a pen licence in school? Is it acceptable to eat cereal for dinner? And – from time to time – does Twitter sell books? Certainly, if I’m anything to go by, the answer to that last question is a resounding yes, as the vast majority of what I read I read as a result of either direct recommendation or having my curiosity piqued in one way or another by the other book lovers I chat with there.

This new title is a case in point, with my attention being brought to it when physical proofs dropped through other bloggers’ letterboxes. When I saw that not only was it on Net Galley, but that it was being compared to the writing of Jenny Pearson and was illustrated by the brilliant George Ermos, I had to request it. While not quite what I was expecting, this is a warm-hearted adventure that I absolutely loved and one that will stay with me for some time, as I think it will many readers.

Unusually, our story open with a list – not a shopping list, or a wishlist but a list of what our hero Marty’s grandfather owns. On paper, it seems like quite a lot, but it pales into insignificance beside the list of Marty’s mum’s possessions which is impossible to record because it allegedly runs into billions and trillions of things. From this, we might expect her to be a wealthy woman with trinkets galore, but in fact Marty’s mother is a hoarder who is unable to throw anything away, with the result that the family home is overwhelmed by the amount of stuff held within.

To provide some respite from this living hell, Marty visits his grandfather on his allotment each night on the way home from school. When we meet the two of them, it is Marty’s birthday and, hugely excited, Grandad gives him a present – an enormous seed. Disappointed, but touched that the old man has remembered, Marty thanks him before returning home to his mother, who has forgotten his special day, and preparing dinner for them both.

After school the following day, Marty is picked on by some of the other children and mutters something he shouldn’t under his breath. He is then surprised by fellow pupil Gracie who tells him off for using bad language and who reveals that she knows what he said because she lip-reads. Asking her if this is a super-power, she embarrasses him when she reveals that she is deaf but he overcomes this when he is forced to laugh by her sharp sense of humour. The two swiftly become friends and when Marty and Grandad plant the seed together, Gracie becomes part of the team looking after it. But the seed is no ordinary seed, and when it begins to grow Grandad starts to hatch an elaborate plan which will take the three of them on an incredible adventure…

There are more and more children’s books which tackle subjects such as poor parental mental health and here it is very clear that Marty’s mother is really struggling with hers. Unable to leave the house and compelled to behave in the way she does, we feel Marty’s deep frustration that she is not like other parents and that he is powerless to help her, other than primarily acting as her carer – a dreadful burden for any youngster. Although Grandad recognises that he is unable to give Marty the material things that his peers have, he gifts Marty his time, his support and his love, and Marty is all the wealthier as a result.

In Gracie, Marty finds a true friend – something that up until now has been sadly lacking from both of their lives – and together with Grandad, the three of them form a surrogate family of their own, which is an absolute delight. Her father is determined not to let her deafness prevent her from living life to the full but has not stopped to ask her how she feels about what happens in her life, meaning that she is sometimes overwhelmed and isolated by her difference, even at home. In the company of Marty and his grandfather, who make no demands on her, she finds that she can just be and is much happier as a result.

Perfect for Year 4 upwards, this would make a fabulous class reader – not just because of its inclusivity but because it is a glorious story, packed with wonderful humour and the beautiful illustrations will make this an enormous hit with those readers who are not yet confident enough for longer, pictureless texts.

Publishing May 12th, this is a beautiful story – one that warrants pre-ordering and repeated reading. The most enormous thanks must go to Net Galley and Pan Macmillan for my virtual advance read.

What a gem of a book! Read it in one sitting - didn't want to put it down. A lovely story of friendship, families, and most importantly self-belief. And not forgetting a rather large pumpkin that takes Marty on a fabulous adventure.

This is a lovely book. The characters are really relatable, and their struggles are realistic, and then the adventures they have are humorous and larger than life. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, as a teacher looking for new literature to share with my pupils, and am very likely to use this book. I would have given it five stars as it is nearly perfect. However, for me it was spoiled by the use of expletives like "Oh God" and "Jesus", which can be offensive, and is not really the kind of language I'd like to share with children who are 8 and 9 years old. I'm not sure the reference to snogging is particularly helpful either in a book for children. ( I'll deal with this by reading the book aloud to the children and not giving them their own copy. Then I can simply miss out/change those words). Apart from that disappointment, the book is perfect in every other way. I was gripped by the story and wanted to read on to find out what happened next. The topics of parents splitting up and difficult family relationships was handed in such a gentle, sensitive, supportive way. This book would lead to some great discussion about life, families and friendships, as well as a bit of topic work on gardening and growing.