Summer Father Was 10, The

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.