The Bad Seed by Jory John, Illustrated by Pete Oswald and is written for children aged 4-8, or Preschool reading level. It’s designated as children’s fiction. [Affiliate links for books via Amazon]
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The story explores the themes of isolation, pain, and how it can fester and cause additional damage, far and above what the initial pain was, both to the individual themselves and those around them. There is also a surface-level depiction of the sunflower’s life cycle, showing the seeds growing on the sunflower head and then being harvested.
Our sunflower seed main character starts out happy, full of joy and hope. As a result of pain and abandonment they become angry and reserved, lashing out whenever other characters interact with them. They have been hurt and in responding to that pain others only see their antagonistic behavior. They are called a “bad seed” because that is what they are perceived to be. If it’s said often enough, vehemently enough, a person starts to believe it. To internalize it.
It’s ok to not be ok all of the time. It doesn’t mean you’re bad. Having traumas that you need to work through doesn’t make you a bad person, regardless what media (film, books and the like) and wider society would argue. Therapy is often a rather helpful tool for folks.
Also, acknowledging that you have things to work through does not negate any progress or personal growth/advancement/etc you have achieved.
Life’s a journey. Sometimes it takes people a bit to find their footing, especially after some kind of trauma. And that is ok too. Having a strong, supportive community tends to help in situations like that too.
This being said, there are several issues with the text itself. While the ending is positive, it at once a) depicts a situation where a happy ending is almost a given after having gone through trauma, b) says that when you’re in the middle of processing things you can just ‘decide’ to be better--though they do acknowledge that that is often a long process--and c) continually reinforce the idea that the main character is a “bad seed” till eventually they’re “not so bad anymore” at the end, even though they were never “bad” to begin with--just hurting and afraid. I haven’t read any other books in the series--I believe there are 4 as of now--but remembered reading through this one several years ago and rather liked it. After doing more research about psychology in the interim, the narrative hits a bit different.
Overall, I would give this 5 stars for the cute illustrations, but 3 stars overall for the actual content.