Mike's Magic seeds by Alexander McCall Smith

"Red seeds,' it said. Plant these on a Wednesday. Blue seeds: plant these on Tuesdays or Thursdays. White seeds: never plant these on any day but a Friday.' And then, just under these instructions, a warning was printed in red:

DON'T TELL ANYBODY! KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!"

Mike’s Magic seeds is an absolutely perfect book for young readers. It has all the right elements of magic, friends, jealousy, betrayal and lollies! 

Mike is walking past the shops one day on the way to school and he sees a closing down sale on a little shop he has never seen before. Feeling curious and with a few coins in his pocket he goes inside. The shop keeper is a grumpy man who seems to trick Mike into buying, of all things, a pain paper packet of seeds. At home Mike reluctantly looks more closely at this packet and he discovers some very odd instructions about planting certain seeds on certain days. Since it is a Friday he plants, as instructed, the white seed. This is the first time Mike has ever done any gardening and he feels a little thrill of anticipation wondering what will grow. 

The actual plant is such a surprise for Mike and for the lucky reader. The sweets you see on the cover of this book are slightly foreign for our Aussie kids but I just tell my listeners to imagine their personal favourites. Actually when I read this book I hide the cover because it gives away the surprise of plants that grow sweets.

The sweets on the trees are mostly unknown here in Australia - marzipan, sugared almonds, chocolate flake (we all know this one) and fig rolls. The only fig rolls we could discover were actually biscuits. Some years ago my Grade 3 classes wrote to Alexander McCall Smith telling him how much we loved this book. We also asked about the fig rolls. Alexander wrote a very warm letter as a reply and he sent our school library a couple of free books which was very exciting but alas he did not solve the mystery of those fig rolls.

Image Source: Yippie Chef

The lessons along the way about patience and more importantly about true friendship make this book an important reading experience. Right from the start we know Mike should not trust Angela! Once again this lovely little book is sadly out of print but I would say if you come across a copy grab it with both hands and don’t let go. This little book is one of my favourites to read aloud. I read it every year to groups of children from 1988 until 2017. Yes this is the Alexander McCall Smith who has lots of famous adult fiction too.

One aspect of this book that I truly adore when you read it aloud is the way Alexander McCall Smith tells the reader there is more to come.

"That could be the end of the story of Mike and the magic seeds, but it wasn't"

"And that, again could have been the end of the story of Mike and the magic seeds. Once again, though, it wasn't."

I would follow this book or pair this book with The Lollipop Tree: