Isabel in Bloom
A girl discovers a connection between her home in the Philippines and her new home in the U.S. through a special garden in this middle grade novel that celebrates nourishment and growth.
Twelve-year-old Isabel is the new kid in her San Francisco middle school. It’s the first time in many years that she’ll be living with her mother again. Mama's job in the US allowed Isabel and her grandparents to live more comfortably in the Philippines, but now Isabel doesn't really know her own mother anymore.
Making new friends in a new city, a new country, is hard, but joining the gardening and cooking club at school means Isabel will begin to find her way, and maybe she too, will begin to bloom.
In this beautifully rendered novel-in-verse, Mae Respicio explores how growth can take many forms, offering both the challenges and joy of new beginnings.
An Excerpt fromIsabel in Bloom
Home
I walk with my grandfather
through
a thousand shades of green
plants dressed in dew
flowers flooded in light
as birds fill the trees with their
wild loud songs.
Our garden
comes alive
in mornings.
Lolo drags a hose
the water trickling slow.
We pause at a planter of
Jasmine
Sampaguita.
Weeks ago when I found
out I’d have to say goodbye
he made me plant it
So when you return
you’ll see how it’s grown, he said.
Jasmine
Sampaguita
takes up most of this space.
Rows of shrubs like fences
small white flowers
perfuming the air with their
sweet lush musk.
But we hover over mine
concerned
leaves wilted
brittle brown stems.
No blossoms here.
I crouch down.
What’s wrong, little Jazzy?
I ask, almost expecting a reply.
Plants respond to humans
our voice, our love.
It’s why I name and talk to some of ours:
Elvis Parsley and Vincent van Grow,
my favorite, the Spice Girls
(a cluster of herbs named after
a music group my friends…