Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars

Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars: Grandma's Bag of Tricks
by Sharon Lovejoy

205 pages
Workman Publishing, February 4, 2010
List price: $14.95





Sharon Lovejoy has done it again.  The award-winning and bestselling author of Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots, Trowel & Error, and Sunflower Houses: Inspiration from the Garden, has given us yet another idea-filled scrapbook of projects that grandparents, parents, caregivers, and siblings can use to make learning an adventure and an experience your favorite young person will remember forever.

Just a few examples:

• Make a time capsule to bury in the garden
• Find the "bunny" inside a peanut
• Make a caterpillar of cucumbers and carrots - then eat it!
• Make a pinecone feeder for the birds
• Play with the faeries

This is a delightfully illustrated (by Lovejoy) treasure trove of memory makers, with 130 ideas for doing just that.  Some are clearly better experienced with a child, but I found more than few that can be done without help from anyone.

The next time I buy a fresh pineapple from the grocery, the top of it is going to sit atop a jar of water for rooting, instead of going into the trash or compost pile.  And what about the toad cottages mentioned in the title? I've always wanted one of those.

Thanks, Grandma Lovejoy, for showing us the way.

Sharon Lovejoy is an author, illustrator, lecturer, and teacher, and the children's garden adviser to the American Horticultural Society. She has been a guest on Today at NBC, PBS's Victory Garden, and the Discovery Channel, and speaks at educational conferences and gardening organizations around the country. She has four grandchildren and divides her time between California and Maine. Her website is www.sharonlovejoy.com and she writes a blog at sharonlovejoy.blogspot.com.

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The publication being reviewed in this blog post was the sole compensation for reviewing the product. All opinions expressed here are mine. If I like it, I'll say so. If I don't, I'll say that, too.