Free Flower Power by Nancy Krulik

Chapter 1
    The minute Katie Carew walked into her fourth-grade classroom, she began giggling. Her teacher, Mr. Guthrie, looked so funny. He was wearing bright green pants and a green turtleneck shirt. A circle of white constructionpaper petals framed his face. He looked like a giant daisy.
    The Mr. G.-daisy fit right in with the 4A classroom. Paper flowers hung from the classroom ceiling. Plastic flowers were strewn around the floor. And there was a daisy chain around Slinky the snake’s cage.
    “Let me guess; we’re learning about flowers today,” George Brennan, one of Katie’s classmates, predicted as he plopped down in his beanbag chair.

    “What makes you say that?” Emma Weber joked, looking at a bouquet of plastic roses on a windowsill.
    “Just a wild guess,” George laughed, picking up a pink and white tissue-paper carnation.
    “A wild
flower
guess,” Kadeem Carter added.
    “That’s right, dudes. Our next learning adventure is the life cycle of a flower,” Mr. G. said. “So hurry up and start decorating your beanbags, because I have a huge surprise for you.”
    “What’s the surprise?” Mandy Banks asked excitedly.
    “It wouldn’t be a surprise if he told us,” Kevin Camilleri reminded her.
    Katie grinned as she taped purple and yellow paper pansies to her beanbag chair. She loved decorating her beanbag. She got to do it every time the class learned about something new. All of the kids in class 4A sat in beanbags. Mr. G. thought kids learnedbetter when they were comfortable. Katie and her classmates totally agreed.
    Katie’s class did a lot of unusual things in fourth grade. There was the time they were studying birds, and Mr. G. made them all dig worms out of the mud and eat them. (Luckily, they were just gummy worms buried in chocolate pudding!)

    And who could forget when Mr. G. had dressed like Abraham Lincoln for Presidents’ Day?
    Or the way he had turned the kids into fish (or at least had them
pretend
to be fish) when they were studying ocean life?
    Now, today, Katie’s teacher was dressed like a giant daisy and standing in the middle of what looked more like a garden than a classroom. And there was still another giant surprise to come! Mr. G. was definitely the greatest teacher in the world!

    “Okay, dudes, gather round,” Mr. G. said once everyone finished decorating their beanbags.
    The kids hurried to the front of the room where Mr. G. removed some clay pots and a bag of dirt from the closet.
    “We’re planting flowers,” Kevin guessed. He sounded kind of disappointed.
    Katie knew how he felt. Planting flowers was a really normal classroom activity.Usually Mr. G.’s projects were more interesting than that.
    Mr. G. was holding several white envelopes. One by one, he handed them out to the kids. “There are seeds inside each envelope,” Mr. G. explained. “Flower seeds.”
    “What kind of flower will I grow?” Katie asked Mr. G. The seed packet Mr. G. handed her had no name or picture on it.
    “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he told her.
    “You mean, I’ll find out when it pops up out of the dirt?” Katie asked.
    Mr. G. shook his head. “You’ll find out sooner than that. You have something else besides the seeds. Inside each of your envelopes is a list of clues about the flower you will be growing. It’s your job to figure out from the clues what kind of flower seeds you have.”
    Katie opened her packet and took out a piece of paper. She read what was written on it.
    The ancient Aztec people thought this flower was magical
.
    Today it is used in Africa and India to color foods such as butter and cheese
.
    This is an unusually tough flower. It can grow in mild to cool temperatures as long as it is in sunlight
.
    Can you figure out what your mystery flower is
?
    Katie smiled broadly. A mystery flower. Now
that
was very, very Mr. G.!

Chapter 2
    “Hi, Katie,” Jeremy Fox said as he placed his tray down next to hers in the school cafeteria later