Going Offbeat

First-grade gardener Gertie Green finds herself the object of an admiring classmate's unwanted attention in this beautifully illustrated early chapter book about friendship, compassion, and the power of perspective.

Zoey copies Gertie's smiley faces. She copies her numbers. She even sits next to Gertie at lunch and tries to copy her best friend. Then Zoey goes too far. She copies the thing that Gertie likes best about herself, the thing that makes her different from everybody else in class. How do you get a copycat to stop, when everything you try just makes your problems bigger?

While Gertie is pushed to the limit at school, her big sister Liza is in a funk and is taking it out on Gertie at home. But when Liza's middle school moping meets Gertie's fascination with a new colorful vegetable, Gertie gets a great idea for something that she knows Zoey will never copy. When carrying out her plan results in a second copycat, Gertie discovers that sometimes the solution to a problem simply lies in how you look at it.

This is the second book in this beautifully illustrated, early reader chapter book series about friendship, gardening, and the power and importance of being yourself. Each book features a different vegetable as a key part of the story and includes how-to-grow information for young gardeners.

Visit the Free Digital Downloads tab of the publisher's website (shelfspacebooks.com) for an extensive selection of companion resources to go along with the Gertie in the Garden books, like food and gardening activities and coloring books.

The Gertie in the Garden series is so engaging . . . growing vegetables and even playing with them will encourage kids to view healthy foods as helping them negotiate their way in the world. Kids will love these books (and parents will too). ~ Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, New York University