Sam the Man & the Rutabaga Plan

Available at Select Retailers

Sam the Man has a new school project. He's got to "babysit" the—eep!—worst vegetable ever this second hilarious chapter book in a new series from Frances O'Roark Dowell. Sam the Man is back, and he needs a NEW plan. Sam has already solved a chicken problem, but this time, he's having rutabaga issues. Rutabaga? Yes, Rutabaga. You see, Sam thought he was quite clever, missing school while his classmates were picking out their vegetable for a two-week science project. But, instead of being able to skip the project, he gets stuck with the vegetable that no one else wanted: the rutabaga! What even is this thing? It's dirty and kinda purple, and it does not look like something Sam would ever eat. Sam the Man is not a vegetable man to begin with, and he doesn't think he'll ever be a rutabaga man. But after drawing a little face on it, he starts to grow fond of the curious veg. Then it dawns on him that vegetables don't last forever…so he changes his plan: he has to keep this rutabaga happy—and rot-free—for as long as he can. To do that, he'll have to make the best dirt possible. All he needs is a little help from nature, and, of course, his chickens!

Other books by Frances O'Roark Dowell

About the author

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O’Roark Dowell is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Dovey Coe, which won the Edgar Award and the William Allen White Award; Where I’d Like to BeThe Secret Language of Girls and its sequels The Kind of Friends We Used to Be and The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far AwayChicken BoyShooting the Moon, which was awarded the Christopher Medal; the Phineas L. MacGuire series; Falling In; the critically acclaimed The Second Life of Abigail WalkerAnybody ShiningTen Miles Past NormalTrouble the Water; and most recently the Sam the Man series.

While Frances is best known for her “beloved books for tweens and teenagers” (New York Times Sunday Book Review), since 2010 she has hosted a popular podcast about her life as a quilter, and in 2016 established a small publishing company to bring out a line of stories and novels especially for quiltmakers and quilt lovers. The quilting novel Birds in the Air was followed by the short story collection Margaret Goes Modern in 2017. Stars Upon Stars — a sequel to Birds in the Air — will be published in 2019.

​​​​​​​She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, two sons, and a dog named Travis.