The Friendship Garden Series

The fifth book in the Friendship Garden series finds Anna and her friends sleeping under the stars in the garden’s first-ever urban campout! Calling all campers! The Friendship Garden is having a summer sleepover under the stars! Get ready for: 1. Ooey, gooey s’mores 2. Toasty camp fires 3. Ghosts?? Anna is excited for an end-of-summer party with her friends, but she is NOT excited for creepy stories. Anna doesn’t like the dark…or being scared! But her buddies at the Friendship Garden want to tell ghost stories and play scary games! And Anna doesn’t want to look like a ‘fraidy cat, so she decides that she’ll just skip the party instead. Can Anna’s friends convince her that being scared is sometimes fun? Or will she miss out on the Friendship Garden’s party of the year?

To make a new city feel like home, Anna gets involved with a community garden—and cultivates new friendships as well as flowers and vegetables—in the first book in the Friendship Garden series. It may be the orange and red season of fall, but eight-year-old Anna Fincher feels nothing but gray. She and her family have just moved to Chicago for her mom’s new job. Not only does Anna miss her tiny hometown and her true-blue best friends, but she misses her garden. Over the summer she and her friends had been growing big red tomatoes, bright green beans, and pink raspberries on a small plot of land in Anna’s backyard. Now, just when it’s fall harvest time back home, Anna is stuck in a boring apartment with no yard, and starting a brand-new school with kids who are anything but friendly. Until one day Anna makes an amazing discovery: a little community garden right in the middle of the city. And a small idea begins to take root in a big way. What if a bunch of kids took over a neglected, forgotten little garden plot? Could they make anything bloom—even friendship?

Anna starts a new school year with a new teacher who is very different in this sixth book in the Friendship Garden series. It’s a new school year, which means new books, new sharpened pencils, and a new beginning! Anna’s excited to start fourth grade, but she’s not excited about her fourth-grade teacher, Miss Lopez. Miss Lopez is nothing like Mr. Hoffman, Anna’s third grade teacher. For starters, Miss Lopez is S-T-R-I-C-T. She doesn’t allow talking or humming or anything fun. Not only that, but she seems to dislike Anna right off the bat. When Miss Lopez doesn’t pick Anna to help out in the class’s new butterfly garden, Anna realizes she needs to make Miss Lopez like her, once and for all. And she’s willing to do whatever it takes! But how do you force someone like you…especially a teacher?

Anna and her community gardening friends spring into action to help raise baby chicks in the third book in the Friendship Garden series. When Anna moved to Chicago, Kaya became her first real friend, so for her birthday Anna is determined to give Kaya the best present ever! The problem is, the thing Kaya wants more than anything is a pet, but her parents have a strict no-pets rule. Then Anna remembers that Mr. Hoffman’s third-grade class just hatched baby chicks! Anna decides that rather than sending the chicks back to the farm, she’ll convince her teacher to let the Friendship Garden raise them, so Kaya can have a pet of her own. But raising chicks is no easy task. It requires supplies (that cost money) and building things like a coop and a run. How is Anna supposed to get everything ready and keep it a surprise…especially when Anna and Kaya usually hang out every day? Kaya begins to suspect “fowl play” and assumes Anna is ditching her as a friend! Anna feels terrible and what was supposed to be the best birthday present ever quickly turns into the worst one. Will Anna be able to come up with a way to win her best friend back before the chicks get sent back to the farm for good?

Anna and her friends throw a Summer Bee Bash in the fourth book in the Friendship Garden series. The Friendship Garden summer program is in full swing. The summer session, called Sweet Peas and Honeybees, is going to be all about flowers…and bugs. Anna hates bugs! But her little brother, Colin, loves them. And now he’s going to be following Anna around all summer long. B-L-E-C-H. The gardeners also meet Mr. Munoz, a beekeeper who lives nearby. He tells them all about how important bees are to gardens. When Anna finds out that the honeybees are in danger because of colony collapse disorder, she becomes obsessed with saving them. Maybe too obsessed! Kaya, Reed, and Bailey miss seeing Anna, who spends all of her time thinking of ways to rescue honeybees, and not enough time with her friends. At the same time, Anna’s little brother, Colin, won’t stay out of her way, and Anna just wants him to buzz off. Can Anna save the bees…or will her buzzing new hobby keep her friends far away?

Anna and her community gardening friends are excited for the Windy City Pumpkin Fest but then their prize pumpkin disappears in the second book in the Friendship Garden series. Autumn has arrived at the Friendship Garden! That means: 1. Pumpkins for carving 2. Sweet potatoes for eating 3. Piles of leaves for jumping Besides tons of yummy fall food, Anna is excited for the Windy City Pumpkin Fest. There is going to be a bake-off, a moon bounce—even a biggest pumpkin contest! Anna, Kaya, and Reed are sure that their pumpkin, Herbert, will take home first prize. But just two days before the contest, Herbert disappears! Kaya and Anna are sure someone stole their perfect pumpkin. After all, pumpkins can’t just get up and walk away by themselves. Can the Friendship Garden crew catch the orange-fingered thief in time for the festival?