AustLit

'How Does Your Garden Grow features 15 stories from children aged 6-9 years from a very remote community in Western Australia called Tjuntjuntjara.

In 2011, Indigenous Literary Foundation (ILF) received an email from Lachie Coman, a primary school student at Melbourne (Sandringham House, Firbank Grammar). He had heard a little about remote communities and the difficulties living in them and wanted to 'do something'. He organised a visit to a remote community with the assistance and support of his school principal and his father. To fund the trip, Lachie, who was the head of the school's environmental group, grew and sold vegetables from his school garden. Lachie approached ILF asking for advice on the best choice of books to take to the community and we gave Lachie a range of books for the community.

Lachie visited the community and spent significant time at the school. While there he worked in the school's garden - this became an important meeting point for Lachie and the students at Tjuntjuntjara. The entire group wrote a book about the usefulness of a garden and some of the great things that can be grown in a garden - in this case, friendship.

This is also a wonderful project, inspired by a 11 year old boy and is wholly the work of children. Adult involvement in this project has only been as support mechanisms. Children have been in the driving seat of this project from the start to its production of a great story.' (Publisher's blurb)