Gardens and Gumshoes

As most of you who follow my posts regularly know, I participate in my community's local farm market every Saturday July to October.  I started this about three years ago when I was looking for outlets in which to sell my first book, Fern Valley. But as time went on, it became so much more then that. It became a place to socialize with fellow vendors. It became a place to meet members of the community I would not normally have met as a stay-home-mother. It became a place to take the baked goods I love to produce. A reason to try new recipes. A place where Emily could play with other children in the community. A place to buy local products such as crafts, honey, jelly, fruits, flowers, and vegetables. In short, a truly pleasant part of my life.

I find it interesting to see what harvest people will bring to the market each week as the season progresses, and so I thought this week I would share a garden related book my daughter won during the summer reading program at our local library. It is called Victor's Garden and the really interesting thing about this book is that if you flip it over, the story is told in Spanish as well as English.

It is a story about a shy boy named Victor who gets permission to start a garden in a lot next to the school with help from his science teacher. At first only a handful of kids join them, but interest soon grows right along with the veggies. The theme of the book is good nutrition, exercise, and good health. The only negative item I found in the story was when the science teacher took Victor's soda and poured it on the vegetables. When Victor told him soda wasn't good for the plants, the teacher replied that it wasn't good for him either. And while I agree that an overabundance of soda is definitely not healthy, I really don't think an occasional soda is going to be detrimental to one's health. It's all about moderation. All in all though, it was a very good story.

Another exciting thing happened this past week as well. I had a book all lined up to read, but Emily beat me to it. And then to top it off, she enjoyed the story so much she asked if she could read it to me. It really doesn't get much better then that my friends. The book she enjoyed so much was called Gumshoe Goose: Private Eye. Now I don't know about you, but I just love the word Gumshoe. It is such a deliciously old fashioned word and one that most kids probably wouldn't even know today.

So if you want to treat your young readers to a new vocabulary word and a story of a goose that is a detective, then I suggest you look for this book. If you do, you will follow along as goose expertly figures out who kidnapped Baby Chick Chick and is holding her for the ransom price of one chocolate cake!

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming September second! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.