Just in Case – Lisa Connors
In a world with grocery stores and markets always close by, we tend to forget that all that food we enjoy starts from a tiny seed. In the past saving seeds was commonly done or else a family would have nothing to start a new garden with each spring. I save my bean and lettuce seeds and I enjoy collecting flower seeds in the fall – though I never take them all so the birds have some to enjoy over the winter. We hear a lot about pollinators and how important they are in helping produce some of our foods. Even plants where we eat the stems and leaves, as opposed to a fruit, need pollinators or wind to complete their life cycle so there are seeds for the next generation. Saving pollinators is crucial to our survival. So is saving seeds.
I have been curious about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault ever since I heard about it. I was delighted to find a new picture book on this subject – Just in Case: Saving Seeds in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault by Megan Clendenan and illustrated by Brittany Cicchese, Charlesbridge 2025). The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is not the only or even the first seed bank in the world, but it aims to store duplicates of every seed stored in all the other seed banks. Currently, that’s more than 2.25 billion seeds frozen and kept safe, just in case.
Starting with a few pages depicting how strong and protected the vault is, Clendenan then goes back in time to share how we used to grow, collect and keep seeds each year. But because of monocultures, climate change, and our limited use of seeds – we only rely on 12 major crops out of more than 20,000 edible plants for our food – people are worried about seed varieties going extinct. The rest of the book depicts the idea and building of the vault. With approachable text and illustrations, and engaging back matter even young reader-listeners will come away with some awe at the scope of the project. With older readers, we can talk about food security and even think about growing and collecting our own seeds. We may be one person or one family, but building anything always starts with one seed.
