Title: The Musician’s Storyflower

Written by: Liza Mulholland

Illustrated by: Marjory Tait

Published by: Ablekids Press

Written in diary format, Liza Mulholland, outlines her feelings and experiences in taking part in the Storyflower Project in this lovely A4 creative non-fiction book.

The Storyflower Project was inspired by Pauline Mackay, the founding director of Ablekids Press, who decided to grow some sunflowers  for the children at a local family centre. Even though only one survived, which she called Peekaboo, she realised growing the plant for someone else gave it a very special importance and many of the people she told about the project wanted to try it for themselves. So much so, Ablekids Press website now provide free downloadable diaries to document their own experiences. There are two versions one highly illustrated for young children and the other for older people with extra bordered pages for more writing and adding photographs.

In The Musician’s Storyflower, Liza reveals how growing her mum’s favourite plant helped her work through some of the grief in losing her mother. There is a mix of beautiful water-colour illustrations of flowers by Margery Tait and photographic evidence to support the text.

Liza is a classically trained pianist and at the end of The Musician’s Storyflower you can discover the music she composed to reflect her feelings of the process of growing a plant for someone else.

This book would be suitable as a classroom resource introducing caring for the environment in a positive and imaginative way. It would help meet the requirements of science for the programmes of study for key stage one and two, Working Scientifically and Plants. Also the music programmes of study for key stage one, experiment with, create, select and combine sounds using the interrelated dimensions of music and at key stage two, improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music

You can buy copies of The Musician’s Storyflower by Liza Mulholland and Marjory Tait and download the photocopiable diaries from the Ablekids Press website: https://ablekidspress.com/

I would like to thank Pauline Mackay for sending me a copy of The Musician’s Storyflower to review on my blog.