In this touching book with a moral message, a child retells the story
of her father's youth when an impromptu baseball game gets out of hand
and some unthinking boys end up destroying an old man's garden.
Every year my father and I plant a garden. Tomatoes, peppers, onions,
marigold, and zinnias grow in neat, straight rows...and every spring my
father tells me about Mr. Bellavista and the summer my father was ten.
That was the summer a boy lost a baseball under a tomato plant in Mr.
Bellavista's garden. And someone tossed a tomato back instead of the
baseball. A lively battle took place, which seemed like great fun at the
time, but in the end, Mr. Bellavista's garden was ruined.
In a touching story of one boy's efforts to make amends, we see the
rebuilding of a garden and the forming of a relationship across
generations. With luminous, beautifully detailed watercolors, this
excellent book for the whole family shows how we can turn our mistakes
into some of life's greatest moments.