A warm message of encouragement from picture book author Choi Sook-hee to all children around the world.
Each flower blooms with different colors and shapes
A song of hope for children who are like precious seeds!

The fragrant sorghum bridge that spreads its fragrance throughout the village,
The balsam that does not give in to the hot sunlight or the pouring rain,
A plate flower that smiles brightly at anyone it meets… … .
What kind of flower am I, a seed?

A picture book made by planting seeds and making flowers bloom,
A picture book that captures the beauty of our folk paintings.

A few years ago, the author set up a cozy studio in a building built on a hillside.
There was a small, empty piece of land behind the building, so I asked the owner for permission to farm it.
The owner kindly gave permission, and the writer, like a novice farmer, sowed all kinds of seeds to his heart's content.
Later on, you will even get confused about which seeds you planted.
As time passed, tiny cotyledons began to sprout from the spot where the seeds had been sown.
The sprouts were racing to find their place in a space the size of a palm, stretching out their stems and sprouting leaves.
The author watched the growing sprouts and wondered how much time would pass before they would bloom into roses, trumpets, daylilies, and daylilies.

Seeds sprout, sprout leaves, bloom flowers, and bear fruit; this happens naturally throughout the four seasons.
But if you don't bend down and look carefully, you won't see it very well.
As poet Na Tae-ju sang in his widely known poem, “Wild Flowers,” something is beautiful only when you look closely, and it becomes lovely only when you look at it for a long time.
Now, the author has become interested in all kinds of flowers, from the tiny wildflowers scattered across the ground to the showy flowers like pansies and chrysanthemums planted in street flower beds, not just the flowers he himself planted in his palm-sized garden.


All flowers are different, small flowers, large flowers, simple flowers, showy flowers, early bloomers, late bloomers… … each with its own unique characteristics.
The author wanted to capture all the flowers that had taken such a large place in his heart in a picture book.
I used the expressive techniques of our traditional paintings that I learned while attending a folk painting class two years ago.
Our painting techniques are well suited to expressing gorgeous flowers like peonies and lotuses in a more extravagant manner, while small and delicate flowers like dandelions and daisies reveal their simple and modest beauty.

A story I want to tell to all the children of this land,
“You are a seed that holds a flower.”

While preparing a picture book about flowers and seeds, the author thought of the eyes of countless children she met while visiting libraries and elementary schools with her son, who was about to leave his mother's embrace as a college student.
The saying, “Every child is a seed with infinite potential” is perhaps an all too familiar metaphor to us.
But we often forget the precious truth contained in this familiar metaphor.
The author wanted to remind us of this precious truth once again through song-like writing and beautiful pictures.
I also hope that we adults will reflect on whether we hope that our children will be the same smooth and handsome seeds, or the same gorgeous flowers that stand out from others.

We are all born from one seed.
Life, which was once small, thin, and even wrinkled, gradually grows and lives on, blooming flowers from time to time.
Some are weak-willed, some are ill-tempered, and some are late, but each child has a surprisingly different personality and blossoms into a variety of flowers, enriching the world.
There is no flower in the world that is not beautiful.
The author sings of the beautiful possibilities of all the seeds in the world, and at the end of the book, he makes a declaration in a somewhat firm voice.
“Yes, you are a seed too.
“The seed that holds the flower.” And again he asks the children:
“What kind of flower do you want to bloom?” I hope this isn’t a question that demands an answer with grand ambitions, but rather a question that listens to children who are trying to say something in a small voice, lips moving.