THE TINY SEED

The unnatural history of a seed smaller than the others ("Will it be able to keep up. . . ?") that sails on while one, flying too high, is burned up by the sun (flames, yet) and a second "falls into the water and drowns." Once landed, the little seed's luck holds: it is invisible to the bird that eats another seed (though not to us), ditto the mouse wintering under the ground, and though it's a late-bloomer ("Hurry!") it doesn't stop growing until it overtops houses and trees to become "a giant flower." Comes fall it scatters its seeds to the wind, starting the cyclorama again. So scaled, the illustrations are gross in either sense of the word.