{"id":10660,"date":"2024-04-24T16:28:55","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T16:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/?p=10660"},"modified":"2024-07-12T17:40:37","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T17:40:37","slug":"joy-takes-root-childrens-book-centers-on-mindfulness-and-the-healing-power-of-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/joy-takes-root-childrens-book-centers-on-mindfulness-and-the-healing-power-of-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Joy Takes Root\u2019: Children\u2019s Book Centers On Mindfulness And The Healing Power Of Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gwendolyn Wallace\u2019s children\u2019s book Joy Takes Root<\/em> is a thoughtful and beautiful ode to the natural world. It follows Joy, a young black girl, as she learns about herbal medicine and mindfulness through her grandmother\u2019s wisdom passed down through generations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The synopsis reads: \u201cIt\u2019s Joy\u2019s first summer in her grandmother\u2019s South Carolina garden\u2014<\/em>a rite of passage. In the midst of okra, spinach, and strawberries, Grammy teaches Joy that plants are friends with many uses. Herbs, for example, can be turned into medicine.

There in Grammy\u2019s abundant backyard, Joy learns to listen for the heartbeat of the earth and connect it to her own as she takes deep breaths and puts her intentions into the soil. By the story\u2019s end, she learns to grow seeds in her own garden, honoring all that her grandmother taught her. With sensory-rich illustrations from award-winning illustrator Ashleigh Corrin, Joy Takes Root<\/em> is a blissful reminder of all that might bloom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joy Takes Root <\/em>was inspired by Wallace\u2019s own journey. Having navigated the long-term effects of Covid, she embarked on a more deliberate path towards her health and well-being. This led her to collaborate with her mother on a garden project and delve into a herbalism course rooted in the African Diaspora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was not someone who considered myself very in touch with my body, but there was just something about feeling my bare feet in the soil, touching a leaf and learning to tell what my plant needed. . . searching on my hands and knees for strawberries, talking to my plants. . .those things made me feel connected to both myself and the earth in a way I hadn\u2019t before,\u201d she told Reckon Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gardening served as a connection to her paternal grandmother’s garden in South Carolina, deepening their bond. Her childhood is rich with memories of her grandmother’s expansive backyard garden, walking through rows of plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen it comes to forming a relationship with the natural world, there are so few gardening or nature picture books that center Black kids. I think it\u2019s so important that kids know that Black people have a unique relationship with non-human nature, that we have folklore [,] herbal medicine [,] unique crafts like sweet grass, basket weaving and Black kids deserve to see and know that Black people have always cared very deeply about the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purchase a copy of Joy Takes Root <\/em>here<\/a>, or at your local bookstore. To stay up to date with Wallace and her future projects, visit gwendolynwallace.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gwendolyn Wallace\u2019s children\u2019s book Joy Takes Root is a thoughtful and beautiful ode to the natural world. It follows Joy, a young black girl, as she learns about herbal medicine and mindfulness through her grandmother\u2019s wisdom passed down through generations.  The synopsis reads: \u201cIt\u2019s Joy\u2019s first summer in her grandmother\u2019s South Carolina garden\u2014a rite of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174,793],"tags":[31,1476,51],"class_list":["post-10660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-books","category-lifestyle","tag-featured","tag-joy-takes-root","tag-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.watchjaro.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}