You're invited

to our launch party (and the launch of paid subscriptions, if you would like to support our book tour!)

(Part of) Bea’s menagerie of plant pets, overseen by Mrs. Wuf in Bea’s absence, including a guest Christmas cactus she is babysitting for the summer.

Welcome, new readers and subscribers!

Here is a little about the Frog Trouble Times, or the FTT, as we call it around here (here being rural Chatham County, North Carolina, walking distance to the Haw River). The Frog Trouble Times, which takes its name from a Sandra Boynton book and song, started as a paper newsletter we sent to friends and family after Harriet was born (Harriet is now six). Bea (then 4, now 10!) would narrate the details of our life, and I’d type them up and plug them into a newspaper format and print it on our home printer and mail it. Then the pandemic happened, and we were home basically all the time, and of course doing a lot of crafts, taking a lot of walks, seeing a lot of interesting animals—and also, feeling worried about the scary things happening around us (Moms for Liberty trying to take over our school board! Heat waves and hurricanes and the climate crisis!)

We started this free Substack on Earth Day, 2021. To date, we have published 262 posts, which you can read by clicking “archive.” We’ve taught people how to make turmeric tie-dye T-shirts, how to forage for chanterelles and salad greens, and how to raise tadpoles into frogs. We’ve campaigned for candidates and issues and shared our love for Abbott Elementary and our latest favorite books. We took our readers along on an unforgettable bus trip to Civil Rights sites in Alabama. And we were inspired to write two books (so far): Plant Pets (by Bea, with help from Belle, publishing August 24!) and Big Yellow Bus (by Belle, in the works, with help from Bea).

We love sharing our adventures with you, and we love our family of Frog Troublers.

We also love our new subscribers, who found us via this New York Times essay, or this introduction I wrote in yesterday’s Opinion Today newsletter. These new subscribers have encouraged us to allow payments, so today we are doing that! Read on for why… how… and all about a giveaway drawing for paid subscribers…

First, a little why this is a just-Belle post: Yesterday we dropped Bea and Harriet off with their Mamie and Grampa and Steddy in Virginia, where they’ll spend a week playing with cousins, visiting Sammy the town horse, taming Danyelle Tiger (Mamie’s newly-arrived kitten), and probably watching a lot of cartoons and eating a lot of ice cream.

It was strange to return home without them—there had been a big storm, and a limb was stabbed through the garage roof. We didn’t have power for a while, and there was nothing we could do about the roof, so we just read and hung out and eventually ordered some pizza from Capp’s. Richard and I agreed that it was nice having time to ourselves, but we also didn’t know what to do without the girls. The cats, too, were a bit confused—Coco slept on top of Harriet’s sun hat, and Julius required extra cuddles. After it stopped raining I went for a run and saw our neighbor Ellen walking her two collies, Buck and Buddy, and Buck was like, “Where is Bea?” He brought me a pine cone and was disappointed by how not-Bea-like I threw it.

But! The sparkle frogs are abundant, there’s work to be done in the garden, and the river level looks perfect for kayaking, so that’s what we’re gonna do today.

And! We would like to invite you, local friends, to our launch party for Plant Pets, Bea’s first-ever published book and Belle’s first-ever book for kids! It’s happening at 11:00 on Saturday, August 31 at McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village.

New subscribers, Plant Pets: 27 Cool Houseplants to Grow and Love is the first-ever kids’ guide to houseplants, which is also written by a kid (Beatrice Boggs Allen) with help from her mom (Belle Boggs). Here are just a few early reviews on Netgalley, which point out how great the book is (if we do say so ourselves) for adults and kids:

An absolute joy to read! This book is written in a playful, inviting, and accessible voice, filled with delightful and colourful illustration that help you digest the information. The information is easily organized and so enjoyable to learn! I have some experience with houseplants and indoor herbs, but still learned useful information that makes me excited and more confident in incorporating houseplants in youth programming.

WHAT A COOL IDEA! Mother and daughter authors, a child's perspective! I know this says 8+ but my 4 year old LOVED this book!!!! We are planning a date for him to go pick out his new plant pet, that he can learn responsibility to take care of, have in his room as his own, and watch it grow!

Even though I'm an adult, I loved this book! Very accessible with SO MANY ideas and quality information. I'm excited to share this book with my students, my staff, and my family!

What a fun intro to houseplants! Written for an upper elementary level but with great information for anyone, adults included, who wants to get started keeping “Plant Pets”. The author, a young plant lover, starts with chapters on where to get plants, what supplies you will need, and the best places to keep your plants. (I especially liked the instructions for completing a light test).

We are so excited to share our love of plants with our friends and neighbors at McIntyre’s Books, our beloved local bookstore. The launch will include a plant propagation activity (you’ll get to take your very own easy-to-care-for plant pet home!), plus a cake, plus some cool giveaways that Mamie and Richard are working on.

It is happening on August 31 at 11AM. We can’t wait to share this book with you!

There are more tour dates in the works—including library and school visits, and a joint event with the amazing science writer and entomologist Eleanor Spicer Rice—which I will post and share next week, but for now, we’d love to have a great launch! Local readers, can you mark the date on your calendars and forward this post to a few friends?

Speaking of the wider book tour, most of our events will be here in North Carolina, but we have dreams of going to Boston and the West Coast, where we have friends and family and where Belle is doing Big Yellow Bus research. That’s going to take a little bit of green, and since we can’t pay with plants (dang), we have decided, for the first time in FTT’s three-plus-year history, to turn on paid subscriptions. You can still subscribe for free, or you can choose a monthly, annual, or “founding” plan…

We also have a special offer! We have so far done two book giveaways of Plant Pets (Cat and Georgann, your books should be arriving this week!). We would like to give another book away to a new, paid subscriber. The method is very simple—I print the names, put them in a hat, and Bea draws one out!

And if you become a paid subscribe before next Sunday, we will enter your name and you will get a free, early, signed copy of Plant Pets, complete with a Plant Pets bookmark! (If you already pledged, your name will automatically go in the hat.)

So, how are you feeling about subscriptions, Frog Troublers? I’ll admit I’m a little abashed about them (it’s weird to take money from friends), but it’s also for a good cause (supporting our book tour). There will probably be some glitches, FYI (I think it’ll take a couple of days for the subscriptions to be confirmed through Stripe, and I’m not positive all the archives are still viewable but I will make sure they are).

Thank you and welcome to all new and returning Frog Troublers!