Watch Out, World-Rosy Cole Is Going Green

by Sheila Greenwald

Overview

Rosy Cole is thrilled when Mrs. Oliphant selects her idea, "Nature's Gifts," as one of the themes for the school's fall fair. Rosy's team will be gathering rocks, shells, and sea-glass, and with a little bit of paint, they'll turn natural history into works of art. Now that's what Rosy calls imagination!
But Rosy's imagination gets the better of her when she decides to babysit a friend' composting worms. With thousands of wigglers to take care of, things get more than a little messy. How will Rosy ever get out of this one?
Watch Out, World--Rosy Cole is Going Green is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429996532
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	05/21/2025
Series:	Rosy Cole
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	113
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Sheila Greenwald's Rosy Cole books have been delighting readers for more than twenty years. She lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Nature's Gifts

In the middle of the first week of school, Mrs. Oliphant reminded us of the date and theme of Miss Read's School Fall Fair.

"This year the fair hopes to raise enough money to plant trees in the yard and buy energy-saving lightbulbs for the entire school," she said. "Our class has been assigned four different booths to sell green-themed products. Let's come up with some great ideas."

Natalie Pringle raised her hand. "I can bring two dozen copies of the new DVD Captain Nature," she called out.

Natalie's father owns Dave's DVDs on Third Avenue.

"Fantastic," Mrs. Oliphant said. "Team one, DVDs and CDs with a nature theme."

"How about books?" Mimi Prescott asked. "I can get forty copies of the best seller Earth on a High Wire."

Mimi's mother is Betsy of Betsy's Books on Madison.

"Excellent," Mrs. Oliphant agreed, adding green-themed books to her list.

"I'm sure many of you will find items to add to Natalie and Mimi's teams." She looked around the room. "Any other team ideas?"

Posey Bloom raised her hand. "Plants, flowers, and shrubs."

Posey's grandparents own Posey's Blooms on Fifth.

Mrs. Oliphant beamed. "How many of you could bring in a cutting from a plant to help out Posey's team?"

Several hands went up.

Mrs. Oliphant smiled at the rest of us. "I bet if you search your rooms, all of you will come up with something you no longer need that could be recycled and would make a great green gift."

Something in my room that I no longer needed that would make a great green gift? I pictured my room.

There wasn't a thing I didn't need.

Except maybe ...

I remembered the pail full of smelly shells and rocks I had tossed in the back of my closet at the end of summer. Things I had picked up at the beach. My mother called this stuff "nature's gifts."

I raised my hand.

"What about nature's gifts?" I asked.

"What about them?" Mrs. Oliphant looked puzzled.

"Rocks, shells, and sea glass I found on the beach," I explained, thinking how I would need to give them a little touch-up with nail polish to make them look as shiny as they had when they were wet.

"An imaginative idea!" Mrs. Oliphant said. "In fact, we can call your team 'Nature's Gifts.'" Now we have four good teams to choose from. Think about which one you want to join, get together, select a captain, and collect the items you will offer for sale in your booth."

I couldn't believe it. I had come up with a team theme.

"Remember, working as a team means sharing ideas and getting along as a group," Mrs. Oliphant said.

I looked around the room and hoped somebody would sign up to share ideas and get along with me.

At lunch Christy McCurry leaned across the table and put her face next to mine. "Nature's Gifts?" she scoffed. "I think I'll go with Natalie or Mimi's team, or maybe even Posey's."

"That's a good plan," I said, "if you have no imagination."

"I have an imagination," Hermione Wong piped up. "I also have rock samples from a nature walk that I don't think anybody would pay a nickel for."

"Rocks?" I remembered the ones I'd seen in the gift shop near my aunt's beach house. "I think you mean doorstops and paperweights painted with happy faces and flowers, then personalized with people's names." I closed my eyes and smiled. "Imagination."

"Maybe I could sell my last batch of fudge," Debby Prusock teased. "It came out hard as a rock."

"Stones that melt in your mouth," Hermione joked.

Even though they laughed, I opened my notebook and wrote this down. Suddenly everyone was so quiet I could practically hear their brains changing gears.

"How about driftwood?" Keisha Wilson called out from the end of the table.

"Woodwork by waves," I said.

Then everyone started talking at the same time, remembering all kinds of rainy day projects from camp that were collecting dust in the back of a closet.

I could hardly write fast enough. "These are all Nature's Gifts," I said, remembering the team name Mrs. Oliphant had suggested.

"You should call my brother, Donald," Christy suggested. "His ammonite collection is huge. How many fossilized sea creatures does one person need anyway? I bet he could spare a few for a good cause."

A good cause? Had Christy changed her mind about my team?

"Ammonites." I wrote this down, happy to have any excuse to call Christy's cool older brother.

"Isn't this amazing?" I asked. "We just started, and already we're sharing ideas and working like a team. And we'll have loads of stuff to sell, too."

"Not loads," Linda Dildine shook her head. "All I have is tree fungus," she confessed.

"Don't worry," I assured her. "If you open your eyes to nature, you'll find gift ideas all around you."

"Open your eyes at the American Museum of Natural History gift shop and you'll find even more," Hermione advised. "They've got the best gifts from nature you ever saw."

Since Hermione is a regular at the museum and its gift shop, I would take her word for it.

"The fair is October 20," I said, closing my notebook. "That's only a little over a month away. If you're interested in the Nature's Gifts team, our first meeting will be next Thursday at my place."

"Aye, aye, captain," Debby said, saluting me.

I sat there, smiling. Who would believe an idea that started with a pail of smelly beach stuff would take off like a seagull following a garbage barge? I could just imagine myself at the helm in the captain's chair!

My name is Rosy Cole. I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the same building as Hermione Wong and Christy McCurry. We attend Miss Read's School, which is all girls and private. My two older sisters, who went to Read, tell me that as far back as they can remember, the Fall Fair with its raffles and games and booths was always the same. People like Natalie and Jenny and Posey bring expensive new things everybody wants, and people like me bring outgrown T-shirts and old toys that end up on the junk heap.

But I had a feeling that with a little luck, this year would be completely different.

CHAPTER 2

Going Green

As soon as I got home from school, I sprayed Love Me Tonight on my wrists and called Donald McCurry.

"Would you have any ammonites to donate to our Nature's Gifts team for the fair?" I asked.

"I guess I could spare a few of the smaller ones," he offered. "But they aren't very colorful."

"That's okay," I assured him. "It doesn't matter if they're colorful or not. I plan to paint them with special little messages."

"Paint them!" Donald groaned. "You mean something like 'Hi there, I'm an ammonite. Aren't I cute?'"

"It so happens that when you inscribe rocks with words like 'Imagination' and 'Peace' and 'Serenity,' they're much more appealing," I informed him.

"Listen, Rosy, rocks and fossils are appealing without paint or words on them," Donald argued. "In fact, they are among the most amazing things on the planet. I could show you some boulders in Central Park that contain mica and quartz and garnet. They were pushed here all the way from Canada by a giant glacier thousands of years ago.

"I'm sure they're very nice," I said, trying to be polite. "But Central Park boulders are a little big for my booth. Your ammonites would be just right."

"I'll think about it," Donald said, suddenly sounding colder than any giant Canadian glacier.

Sometimes I don't know why I like Donald. Even though he makes my insides fizzy as soda water, he sometimes makes me feel silly and stupid. Still, Donald thinking about helping me was better than Donald not thinking about helping me.

I was sure he would. I was sure he would come around once he saw how good our booth looked. I had a feeling that with a little imagination, nature that's just lying around for free could be made into something even better — something good enough to sell at a school fair that's raising money to go green.

That night at dinner, I told my family about our team.

"Well done!" my sister Pippa congratulated me. "I'm glad to hear that someone in this family will care about the environment while we're away at college. We all need to go green."

My mother sighed. "I don't have time to go green right now. I'm too busy."

"Are you too busy to carry a shopping bag that isn't plastic?" Pippa asked. "Are you too busy to hang-dry clothes washed in cold water with green detergent?"

"Stop lecturing your mother," Dad scolded. "After managing a law office four days a week, she comes home to shop and cook. She took extra pains over this dinner so you two would have a great send-off."

Pippa glared at the shrimp on the end of her fork. "This was flown here from halfway around the world on a plane that spewed deadly fumes into the air we breathe."

My mother stopped eating.

"Please, Mom. Make an effort to buy local," Anitra said, taking Mom's hand.

"You mean pick tomatoes from that patch in the lobby and catch fish out of the courtyard fountain?" Dad tried to joke.

But no one laughed.

*
As soon as we finished dinner, Anitra and Pippa began clearing out their closets and drawers, packing for college. It seemed that what they weren't taking with them, they were throwing away.

"How can I wear these leather boots anymore?" Pippa exclaimed, tossing them in the garbage. "They were once a sweet cow."

"And my old makeup and nail polish." Anitra dumped all the little bottles into the trash. "Toxic."

"Those hobby kits contain poisonous dyes," Pippa warned when she saw me take them out of the trash bag. "Don't be fooled by the pictures on the box."

I wasn't fooled. I was excited. The hobby kits and nail polish would be perfect for turning seashells and sea glass into beautiful pendants.

When Pippa finished sorting through her things, she presented Mom with a canvas shopping bag.

Anitra tacked a list of rules to the kitchen bulletin board.

"This should be a real help to you, Mom," Pippa said, looking pleased with herself. "And, Rosy, you could share this list with your green team."

I didn't tell her I already had my own list.

CHAPTER 3

How to Catch a Local Critter

Saturday morning when I asked permission to go to the museum, my mother was delighted.

"I'm so pleased this project has inspired you to explore the world of natural history," she said, opening her purse to find money for my ticket.

I didn't explain that what I wanted to explore wasn't the world of natural history, but how to sell natural history to the world!

The minute we walked into the gift shop, I could see that Hermione was right. All the ideas we needed were right here.

There were some gifts we had thought of and some we hadn't.

"Over here is my favorite spot in the entire museum," Hermione confided, pulling me up the stairs to the bookshop.

"Books?" I asked.

"And the people who read them," she said with a sly smile. Then I remembered that Hermione has always dreamed of having a brainy boyfriend.

By the time we were ready to leave, I was happy we had come. And when I saw Donald waiting in the ticket line, I thought I was in natural history heaven.

"This is Pete," Donald said, introducing us to the boy next to him. "He's a science nut like me."

Hermione grabbed my arm. "And me," she cooed.

"Are you here to see the live butterflies?" Pete asked her.

"No, alas." Hermione groaned as if she had lost a loved one. "Though the living butterfly exhibit is the most thrilling thing I've ever seen, my friend here insisted we check out the store instead."

"The store?" Pete looked confused.

"Rosy only likes nature if it's giftwrapped," Donald explained. "Ammonites aren't good enough for her unless they have cute messages written on them. Rosy likes nature when it's dead — and has a price tag."

"That's not true," I objected. "I wouldn't mind if your ammonites were alive."

"Live ammonites!" Pete gasped.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Maybe because they became extinct with the dinosaurs, over sixty-five million years ago," Donald said.

For a minute I wished I'd gone extinct with the dinosaurs, too.

"Fooled you." I tried to laugh, hoping nobody would guess who was the fool.

Then I tried changing the subject. "Even if ammonites aren't alive, it would be great if our booth could sell live creature habitats like the ant farms in the museum shop."

"I have a book you could borrow that tells how to catch a local critter," Pete told me. "I'll drop it off with Donald."

"A beautiful, fascinating, exotic local creature is something I have always wanted to catch," Hermione said, gazing at Pete as if he had just sprouted antennae and six legs. "Since I live in Donald's building, you can drop off your book with me, Hermione Wong."

"Hey, we're next in line," Donald said, pulling Pete away.

As they hurried off, I took hold of Hermione to keep her from running after them with an imaginary butterfly net.

CHAPTER 4

Two Thousand Little Wigglers

Sunday morning when the phone rang and Mom told me it was Donald McCurry, I guessed he had decided to offer me some ammonites for our Nature's Gifts booth after all.

"If you're serious about selling live critter habitats, you don't need Pete's book," Donald said. "I can help. Why don't you stop by?"

Was Donald competing with his friend to be helpful? Was he actually jealous? I didn't bother with the elevator. I flew down the stairs.

Donald was waiting for me at his door. "Take a look at this," he said, handing me a booklet as I followed him to his room.

"These worms are nature's wonder workers. They compost city garbage and make it into rich topsoil," Donald explained.

"What could be better?" I said, trying not to look at the picture of the worms.

Donald beamed his approval. "Since you understand how great they are, I wonder if you would help me out."

"Why not?" I said. "That's what friends are for."

I actually thought Donald might give me a hug.

"I need a little time to educate my folks," he said. "It would be a real help if you would prepare their bedding while I prepare Mom and Dad for them."

"Them?" I sat down.

"The two thousand red wigglers I sent away for," he nodded. "That's how many you need to compost the garbage of a family of four."

"Two thousand worms?"

"Since the directions say wood is best, you need something like an old trunk or barrel or even a dresser drawer lined with damp shredded newspaper. Then all you have to do is fill it with eggshells, vegetable peels, and coffee grounds, and add a little dirt on top."

"You want me to make beds out of garbage for two thousand worms?" I was beginning to feel a little sick.

"It would just be so the worms have a home when they arrive. I need a little time to convince my parents of how fantastic they are — putting organic matter back into the soil and reducing the number of landfills that are taking over the planet."

"I don't understand how this helps our booth," I mumbled, standing up and heading for the door before I got sicker.

"If all goes well, I could spare you a few hundred to sell for starter kits," Donald called after me. "They multiply like crazy."

Out in the hall, waiting for the elevator to take me back upstairs, I tried not to think of two thousand worms multiplying like crazy.

CHAPTER 5

My Idea Grows Wings

At our first Nature's Gifts team meeting, everyone placed their products on my bed except for Hermione.

"Mine is a surprise," she explained, clutching a paper bag to her chest.

"I love what you did to your tree fungus," I said, complimenting Linda on the "Fun Gus" faces she'd drawn.

"And the driftwood dancers with their painted ballet shoes are adorable," Debby told Keisha.

When we were finished admiring one another's work, it was finally Hermione's turn.

"Ta da," she sang as she slowly lifted a box from the paper bag. "Guess what?"

"Pasta?" Debby guessed.

"Look again," Hermione laughed. "And you will see it's not just noodles."

"Mealworms?" Debby wrinkled her nose. "Those revolting little things that get into cereal?"

"Ants are revolting little things that get into sugar bowls," Hermione pointed out. "But put them in a see-through container and call it an ant farm and someone will spring $15.95 for the pleasure of taking them home."

"Fifteen dollars and ninety-five cents?" Christy gasped.

"But it's not just about money," Hermione insisted. "Pete says we couldn't live on this planet without bugs. My mealworms are the amazing larval stage of an insect that will soon morph and evolve into mealworm beetles." She showed us the book Pete had lent her. "This book has changed my life."

Hermione read from the first page. "All you need for this great insect adventure is a magnifying glass, nets, jars with holes in the lids, and tweezers."

My team was so quiet you could practically hear the mealworms chew.

"Keep reading," Linda demanded.

"You can find what you're looking for in the air, around water, soil, or plants, and near animals or food." She held up the book to show us the pictures.

"It's like going on a safari," Debby said.

"Exactly," Hermione agreed. "Signs of life are everywhere. Just look around you."

"Something has been eating holes in my sweaters," Debby recalled.

"Maybe it's a wool moth," Hermione said.

"We have a desk my Dad wants to fumigate," Linda suddenly remembered.

"Powder post beetles, if you're lucky," Hermione told her.

Christy was sure she had spotted fruit flies swarming around some peaches.

"I can't wait to see what I find," Keisha said, pulling on her jacket. "This could be more fun than a treasure hunt."

"A treasure hunt? For things we spray and swat and step on?" I began to laugh.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Watch Out, World — Rosy Cole Is Going Green!"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Sheila Greenwald.
Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

The Best Idea of My Entire Life,
1 Nature's Gifts,
2 Going Green,
3 How to Catch a Local Critter,
4 Two Thousand Little Wigglers,
5 My Idea Grows Wings,
6 A Real Friend,
7 Eco Babe!,
8 Surprise!,
9 A Better Idea,
How to Make Your Own Worm Farm,
Acknowledgments,

Editorial Reviews

This book is lots of fun, and will also impart some ‘green' wisdom along the way….” —Library Media Connection

“The story incorporates science into an entertaining early chapter book that has a lively writing style. . . . Rosy retains her charm and spirit, and kids will relate to her dilemmas.” —School Library Journal

From the Publisher