Second Grade is off to a stinkin’ start.
In this beautifully illustrated early reader chapter book about navigating change, young gardener Gertie Green struggles to adjust to new class rules and new personalities in the first weeks of second grade.
Second grade is off to a stinkin’ start. There are classroom jobs. Gertie has to sit beside Scarlett, who does NOT think it is neat that she has the same name as the Scarlet Runner bean, and with hardly any guests expected, it looks like Gertie’s 7th birthday party isn’t going to be a “party” at all. With some of her classmates saying that she’s weird and calling her “bean girl,” Gertie is starting to feel bad about who she is and what she likes to do.
It helps that her friends from first grade are standing by her. But when Clark plays a practical joke on Scarlett to get her back for hurting Gertie’s feelings, it doesn’t make Gertie feel as good as she thought it would. And when she discovers her friend Zoey is worried that she is the weird kid this year, Gertie begins to see that being the only one who’s does something doesn’t make you weird.
This is the fourth 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.
REVIEWS
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
Gertie’s Planning a party . . .
but not everyone in her new second grade class seems to want to be friends.
Scarlett thinks it’s weird that Gertie likes planting beans, and soon some of the kids in her second grade class are calling her “bean girl” and saying that she’s weird.
At first Mr. Winkler twinkles when he smiles. But as Gertie does her classroom jobs and tries to help Zoey, who is also struggling this year, he twinkles less and less.
Even her family thinks Gertie is the weird kid this year. Will anyone even come to Gertie’s garden-themed birthday party? What does it mean to be weird, anyway, and why does it have to be something bad?
