Frances O'Roark Dowell

You need to make some serious cash, but being a seven-year-old means you are way too young to mow lawns for twenty bucks like your older sister. Earning a single dollar to walk your grumpy neighbor around the block just is not cutting it. When another neighbor offers you a job taking care of her backyard chickens, you jump at the chance to prove you are a responsible businessman. It turns out that hanging out with chickens is surprisingly fun, and it is the only thing that actually gets your grumpy neighbor to smile and leave his house. Once you save up enough chore money, you make the ultimate purchase: your very own pet chicken that lays bright blue eggs. Now that the neighborhood kids are lining up to buy your rare blue eggs, you have to figure out exactly what to do with your brand-new farming fortune.

You thought you were being so clever when you missed school on the day your class picked out vegetables for a giant two-week science project. But your plan backfires completely when you return to discover you have been assigned the one vegetable nobody else wanted: the weird, purple, and totally dirty rutabaga. You are definitely not a vegetable fan, and you certainly never planned on babysitting one. But after you draw a little face on its bumpy skin, you start to realize this odd little plant is actually kind of cool. There is just one massive problem: vegetables rot. If you want to keep your new rutabaga buddy happy, healthy, and entirely rot-free, you are going to have to engineer the absolute best dirt in the world. Get ready to roll up your sleeves, dig into nature, and call in some favors from your backyard chickens to save the day.