Fanfiction based on Disney Pixar's "Wall-E" movie and continuing the Sustainability theme. Aimed at children aged 8-9.

1. Wall-E’s Garden
Written and Illustrated by Nicole Barber
Photograph CC by Kayla Casey, 2009. http://tinyurl.com/kq3v3j2

2. Only a little while ago, the Earth
wasn’t a very nice place to live. There
were bad smells everywhere. My
grandmother once told me the air
used to be worse, which I can’t even
imagine.
Apparently, a long time ago, the
Earth was clean. I’d heard stories
that it used to be a great place to
live, with clean air, plants, and other
animals. I found that very hard to
believe.

3. While there weren’t any other
animal species, I had found a friend.
He is a robot, and he looked after
me. His name is Wall-E. Wall-E uses
power to be able to run, but he gets
his energy from the sun, so he isn’t
making the air yuckier.
Back when people lived on the Earth,
so I’m told, they had different forms
of making power that made the air
very dirty. I was glad they’d gone
away; the air was bad enough as it
was without people making it even
worse.

4. One day when I had been out with
Wall-E while he worked, Wall-E found
something beautiful. It was a plant.
An actual plant, growing in the
ground! I had never seen a plant
before. It was so green!
I didn’t know how it had grown, but I
was so glad that it had. I guess Wall-E
thought so too, because he picked it
up and brought it back to our house.

5. After a while, Wall-E went away for a
very long time. I don’t know where
he went, but I missed him. Then he
suddenly returned with a whole
massive ship full of people. The old
stories about people must have been
true!
I hoped the people wouldn’t make
the Earth dirtier again, but they did
seem keen to help clean it up.

6. One of the first things the leader of
the people did was to plant our
beautiful green plant in the ground
and give it some water.
Wall-E told me that plants need
water to survive, and that they have
roots in the ground that drink up the
water and also get plant food from
the soil. Wall-E told me that plants
need the sun for energy just like he
does!

7. Would you believe there are other
animals here! One of the human
children was playing in the dirt and
found a worm. Wow! The Earth must
really be recovering! Worms live
underground, digesting the soil,
making it better food for plants.
Wall-E told me that worms eat dirt,
dead leaves, and food scraps. But
they don’t like onions and citrus
peel. I don’t even know what onions
and citrus peel are!

8. The people who came on the ship must
have found out about different types of
plants, because they started to plant
some seeds. Maybe there was a special
room on the space ship that held
plants and animals. The seeds were all
different sizes and shapes.
The humans loosened the soil with a
shovel and a pitchfork, and planted the
seeds in little rows. Then they covered
up the seeds with a bit of soil and
watered them fairly often. They didn’t
have to water the seeds when it
rained, but I noticed they watered
them enough to keep them damp all
the time.

9. Nothing seemed to happen for a
while. For weeks! I hadn’t known
that growing food would take so
long.
Wall-E told me that it takes 80 days
from planting carrots to being able to
harvest them, 140 days to be able to
harvest onions, and 100 days for
tomatoes to be ready for picking.
That’s a very long time for a
cockroach!
80 days
140
days
100 days

10. Later, tiny seedlings started to appear. More
seemed to appear every day for a little
while. The children and even the adults
were very excited, and ran around pointing
to all the differently shaped plants. I was
pretty excited too, I have to say. All this life,
where only a short time ago there was
nothing but rubbish and dirty air.
Actually, Wall-E told me that the plants help
make the air clean. It’s called
photosynthesis. The plants take in carbon
dioxide, use the sun and the green part of
themselves (called chlorophyll) to make
energy, and let out oxygen. Because they
use up carbon dioxide and let out oxygen,
they make the air easier to breathe.

11. The plants all started growing bigger and
bigger with more and more leaves. Then
some of them became even more
beautiful…they started growing flowers
on their stems! I liked the tomato flowers
the best. They had lovely yellow petals,
and yellow is my favourite colour.
Photograph is CC by Theo Elliott, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/kb8gzp6

12. When I went to look at my favourite
yellow flowers one morning, there was a
big buzzy creature flying around in and
out of them! I started to panic, but then I
found Wall-E, and he told me it was just a
bee and I was not to worry.
Apparently bees are needed to help the
plants grow fruit. So the stripy bee
buzzed from one flower to the next,
collecting and spreading pollen. Wall-E
was right, he wasn’t hurting my flowers.

13. Soon after the bee came, the flowers
started to lose their petals. That’s when I
got really excited, because I could see the
tiny tomatoes starting to grow from
where the flowers used to be.
Day after day I would come and look at
the growing garden, especially my
tomatoes. They were green at first, but
once they got really big (as big as me,
some of them!), they turned red. That
means they are now ripe.
Photograph is CC by jayneandd ,2010 http://tinyurl.com/kcth5mv

14. I started running up the plant towards
one of the tomatoes, just as a human
came over to pick one. That was a
mistake – I’d forgotten that humans don’t
like cockroaches. The human screamed,
and flicked me off the tomato. My
tomato!
Then the human ran towards me, and his
big foot came stomping down right next
to me. I turned and fled, running as fast
as my little legs could carry me. I’m
pretty quick, but the human was right
behind me.

15. Luckily, around the corner of the garden
bed I ran into Wall-E. Wall-E raised one of
his eyebrows as I ran up him, and giggled
as I ran over some of his sensors. I dared
to look around Wall-E’s neck. The human
had stopped very close to Wall-E, and
seemed to be trying to explain that I was
there.
Wall-E told the human that I was his
friend, and that in fact he himself would
like the tomato that I had been “dirtying”
(as the human said). The human didn’t
look very happy about it, but he knew
who Wall-E was and that he had helped
them come back to Earth. So he handed
over the tomato.

16. Wall-E took me back to our new house
close to the garden, and put me down
with my yummy tomato lunch. As I sat
there, I looked across at the garden. It
was still getting wider and longer, as the
humans cleared away more and more
rubbish, and planted more and more
trees.
The tree that was planted from the boot
was taller than Wall-E now. The Earth is
coming alive again. I only hope humans
can make it healthy again, then keep it
that way.