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Water, Weed, and Wait Hardcover – August 10, 2010


When Miss Marigold challenges the kids at Pepper Lane Elementary to turn an unpromising patch of their schoolyard into a garden full of fruits, flowers, and vegetables, they know they'll need all the help they can get. Soon everyone in the community is lending a hand—including an unlikely neighbor with a soft spot for gardening—and it isn't long before peppers, zuccchini, sugar peas, snapdragons, zinnias, and much more are growing and blooming.
 
· Back matter includes photos of students gardening in real school gardens and information on how readers can start their own school or home garden project.
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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

K-Gr 2–Miss Marigold cajoles youngsters at Pepper Lane Elementary into cleaning up a section of the playground and planting flowers and vegetables. Grouchy Mr. Barkley, who lives on the other side of the schoolyard fence and has a fine garden of his own, soon becomes an ally, adding to Miss Marigold's lessons. Busy cartoon-style, mixed-media scenes crowd the pages with the children and their plants as "the garden lady" dispenses seed packets from her hat brim and cautions them all to "water, weed, and wait." She cheerily advises that "school gardens take plans, plants, and people" and goes on to shower the garden with ladybugs and help the children make a worm bin. Finally all is ready for a celebration and a vegetable feast, complete with Mr. Barkley appearing as a singing carrot. This quick skim of the gardening process and the crammed scenes offer more encouragement than actual information. The authors include a bit of broad advice in endnotes along with a short list of websites, some safety rules, and a general planning checklist. Didactic in its scheme and tone, the book might reassure teachers and classes considering some gardening.Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston
© Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

From Booklist

“School gardens take plans, plants, and people. . . . Then you water, weed, and wait.” With lots of peppy, alliterative phrases, this cheery picture book follows students at Pepper Lane Elementary as they reclaim a scrubby, litter-strewn patch of the playground and, with the help of neighborhood volunteers, transform it into lush garden beds. Leading the effort is wacky, encouraging teacher Miss Marigold, who stores seed packets in her whimsical hats and befriends the schoolyard’s grouchy neighbor Mr. Barkley, a passionate gardener whose disposition magically transforms as he gets more involved in the project. Madden’s mixed-media illustrations hum with activity, described in the energetic, nicely paced text. Kids may not learn much about the specifics of growing plants from this title, but they’ll come away with a sense of the effort that starting a garden requires, as well as the ways that it can transform a community. A final spread offers additional resources for students and teachers interested in “sprouting” their own school gardens. Grades K-2. --Gillian Engberg

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tricycle Press
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 10, 2010
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Ex-Library
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 32 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1582463204
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1582463209
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 5 - 8 years
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.63 x 0.39 x 10.29 inches
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ Kindergarten - 3
  • Best Sellers Rank: #1,549,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

About the author

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Edith Hope Fine
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Award-winning children’s author Edith Hope Fine writes books kids love to read, including six picture books. Her 18 titles spark curiosity, like “Cryptomania: Teleporting into Greek and Latin with the CryptoKids,” a zany exploration of word roots. If you long to write for children, check out her “Jump, Froggies! Writing Children's Books, 89+ Beginners’ Tips” (paperback and ebook). Always on blooper patrol, she co-authored the two popular “Nitty-Gritty Grammar” guides. Edith lives in California where she’s active in SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators). Yes, she's working on teleporting. (www.edithfine.com)