Michelle Obama Reveals How Her White House Garden Grows
By MARIAN BURROS
Published: May 29, 2012
Every so often, a flash of Michelle Obama’s humor comes through in her otherwise serious book about the White House garden and her campaign against childhood obesity, “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America,” which goes on sale Tuesday.
Mrs. Obama will be making television appearances this week to promote the book; on Tuesday alone, she is scheduled to appear on “Good Morning America,” “The View” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”
She is willing to poke fun at herself and her husband, writing that she grew only five pumpkins in three years and produced perfectly shaped but tasteless cantaloupes. She relays President Obama’s concern about the White House beehive being placed too close to his basketball court.
For anyone who has not been paying attention to how Mrs. Obama started a garden on the South Lawn and how it morphed into her anti-obesity campaign, the book, which is filled with pictures that make vegetables look as beautiful as flowers, neatly sums it up. (And there are plenty of shots of Bo, the family dog.)
“American Grown” is filled with advice for parents, schools, cities and states on how they can help combat the obesity crisis: how to start gardens, get children to like healthy foods and find more opportunities for exercise. It also provides recipes and some startling statistics. Lt. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, now the head of Army forces in Europe, writes that in 2004 only 4 percent of men and 10.5 percent of women failed the fitness test that is required to join the military. By 2010, 47.6 percent of men and 54.6 percent of women failed the test.
Mrs. Obama had lots of help writing her book. In addition to Lyric Winik, a Washington writer who worked with Laura Bush on her book “Spoken From the Heart,” there are White House staff members connected to the garden and kitchen and those who have stories to tell about the gardens they have started in their cities and towns.
There is also a section on the importance of physical activity, including a photograph showing Mrs. Obama doing her record 142 hula hoop revolutions on the South Lawn.
The book, published by the Crown Publishing Group and featuring a cover photograph of Mrs. Obama, is priced at $30. Proceeds go to the National Parks Foundation.
No comments:
Post a Comment