Haywood, Carolyn. Eddie’s Green Thumb. William Morrow and Company, 1964. Read for the 1964 Project.
Carolyn Haywood’s many books about Betsy and Eddie and the 1950’s neighborhood that they live and grow in never disappoint! Eddie’s Green Thumb is just one of the many books by Haywood featuring the intrepid and inventive Eddie Wilson, who reminds me of Beaver Cleaver of Leave It to Beaver fame. In fact, despite the fact that Ms. Haywood gives us numerous illustrations depicting Eddie, he always looks a lot like Beaver in my mind as I read about Eddie’s adventures.
“It’s a Green Thumb project,” said Eddie. . . .
“You see,” said Eddie, “we’re all going to have gardens and grow things.
“You mean flowers?” said Rudy.
“No, vegetables,” said Eddie.
“Where does the green thumb come in?” Rudy asked.
“Well,” said Eddie, feeling important because he knew something his brothers didn’t know. “When you’re a good gardener, like I’m going to be, you have a green thumb.”
“We” includes all of the kids in Eddie’s class, but particularly his friends Annie Pat and Boodles and Sidney. Annie Pat and Eddie go into the seed business, selling vegetable seeds to their classmates, with ridiculous and comedic consequences when the various seeds for different vegetables get all mixed up. Eddie and Boodles find rabbits in the garden and crows and have to decide how to keep the animals from eating all the produce. Then, when the harvest finally arrives, the children work together to sell their leftover assorted veggies from their own vegetable stand with mixed results.
Will Eddie get a Green Thumb Award for his prize watermelon? Read it and find out. And get inspired to plant your own vegetable garden. The Eddie and Betsy book are so perfect for the six to ten year old crowd, either to be read aloud as a family or for independent readers who are just moving into the chapter book reading level. The print is large enough and clear, but the book itself is 182 pages long, challenging for intermediate readers but doable. And the content is funny and cute with none of the questionable or crude humor found in many 21st century offerings for this age group.
Eddie’s Green Thumb has been out of print for a long time, but you can probably find a used copy of this and other Eddie books at a reasonable price since these books were once highly popular and carried in most libraries. You also might be able to find a copy of this and other books by Carolyn Haywood in a Private Lending Library near you.