The popular Bloomers Island! gardening kits and online world blossom in a playful, beautifully illustrated new book aimed at getting kids to love everything about nature. Join the Bloomers on a whimsical adventure as they attend a magical boarding school on Bloomers Island. As Pete Moss, Rosey Posey, Big Red, Violet, and their friends prepare for the Great Garden Party, they learn about gardening, healthy eating, and caring for the environment. The treehouse school is held by the arms of Mr. Banyan, a tree about to celebrate his 200th birthday. His birthday party is filled with fun games that teach the curious students that gardening is not at all boring or hard--that it's actually really fun!

In Big Red and the Terrible Tomato Hornworms, Professor Sage holds a contest between the young Bloomers where each must choose their favorite vegetable to grow and care for. Here, young readers are introduced to the character of Big Red, who knows exactly what he wants to grow: tomatoes! After all, they are the main ingredient in some of his favorite foods: spaghetti, ketchup, and pizza. But as he starts planting, he discovers that he’ll have to battle hornworms to keep his tomatoes healthy and safe. In the end, he has to use his newfound gardening knowledge and peacemaking skills to work with the hornworms and save his tomatoes. Bloomers Island Garden of Stories picture books take young readers and listeners to Bloomers Island to experience the world of plants, flowers, and gardens through lively stories and lush illustrations.

Follow Pete Moss in this magical, beautifully illustrated story as he attends boarding school on Bloomers Island to learn about gardening and growing his own vegetables. When Professor Sage announces the Very Very Veggie Challenge, Pete immediately knows what he needs to grow spinach. It’s the one vegetable that can make him stronger. But does Pete have the patience to grow his spinach plants to win the contest? With the help of headmaster Professor Sage and his fellow Bloomers, Pete learns all about spinach, working hard toward his goals, and that good things take time to happen! The Bloomers series brings to life the world of gardening and healthy-eating to young children in new and exciting ways.

Follow young Rosey Posey in a magical, beautifully illustrated story as she attends boarding school on Bloomers Island to learn about gardening and growing her own vegetables. When Professor Sage announces the Very Very Veggie Challenge, Rosey isn’t sure she wants to participate. But encouraged by headmaster Professor Sage and inspired by her favorite color, Rosey decides to grow a perfectly pink radish—in a perfectly pink pot on her perfectly pink windowsill! With patience and curiosity, she discovers just how fun and rewarding gardening can be, and not as hard as she thought! The Bloomers Island series brings to life the world of gardening and healthy-eating to young children in new and exciting ways.

Celia Laighton Thaxter (1835-1894) was born in Portsmouth, NH. When she was four, her father became the lighthouse keeper on White Island in the Isles of Shoals. After resigning his post eight years later, he built a resort hotel on Appledore Island in Maine. The first of its kind on the New England coast, the hotel became a gathering place for writers and artists during the latter half of the 19th century. In her last year of life, Celia published this work, in which she lovingly describes her Appledore garden and its flowers. The flowers she grew in her cutting garden filled her own rooms and those of the hotel, and this work became famous for its descriptions of the old-fashioned flowers she grew there. Her island garden, a plot that measured 15 feet square, has been re-created and is open to visitors.

When Professor Sage announces the Very Very Veggie Challenge, Pete immediately knows what he needs to grow spinach. It's the one vegetable that can make him stronger. But does Pete have the patience to grow his spinach plants to win the contest?

Winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction Finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Red Star Tattoo is Sonja Larsen's unforgettable memoir of a young life spent on the move, from hardscrabble Milwaukee to dreamy Hawaii, from turbulent Montreal to free-spirited California. At the age of 16, Sonja joins a cult-like communist organization in Brooklyn--unaware of the dark nature of what awaits her. A small, skinny 8-year-old girl holding a teddy bear stands by the side of a country road with a young man she barely knows. They're hitchhiking from a commune in Quebec to one in California. It is 1973 and somehow the girl's parents think this is a good idea. Sonja Larsen's is a childhood in which family members come and go and where freedom is both a gift and a burden. Her mother, thrown out of home as a pregnant teenager by her evangelical preacher father, is drawn to the utopian ideals and radical politics of communism. Her aunt Suzie is gripped by schizophrenia, her behaviour so erratic she eventually loses custody of her daughter. And then there is her cousin Dana, shunted back and forth long-distance between her parents--Dana, whose own need to escape leads to tragedy. Looking for a sense of family, searching to belong, to have your life mean something--this is what all these girls and young women share. As a teenager, Larsen moves to Brooklyn, embedding herself with an organization known publicly as the National Labor Federation and privately as the Communist Party USA Provisional Wing. Over her three years at the organization's national headquarters, Larsen works sixteen-hour day, eager to prove herself. Noticed and encouraged by the Old Man, the organization's charismatic leader, he makes her one of his "special girls," as well as the youngest member of the organization's militia and part of its inner circle. But even as she and her comrades count down the days on the calendar until the dawning of their new American revolution, Larsen's doubts about the cause and the Old Man become increasingly difficult to ignore. Red Star Tattoo explores the seductions and dangers of extremism, and asks what it takes to survive a childhood scarred by loss, abuse and the sometimes violent struggle for belonging.