Green Thumbs-Up! — Jenny Meyerhoff

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?