Sam the Man Books in Order

Seven-year-old Sam wants a paying job, but opportunities are scarce until a neighbor needs someone to mind her chickens. The work helps him coax an elderly man outdoors and inspires an ambitious plan involving blue eggs.

Sam is assigned an unwanted rutabaga for a school science project and unexpectedly becomes attached to it. Determined to stop it rotting, he devises a plan that calls for better soil, help from nature and his chickens.

Sam hopes his family's replacement vehicle can be a monster truck. When that idea fails to persuade his mother, he proposes transforming their minivan with a painted dragon, but first must win everyone over and learn how.

After solving the mystery of a missing sock, Sam forms a detective club with his friends. With no cases arriving, they investigate the school's lost property, where a locked box, stuffed snake and suspiciously smelly jacket await.

Sam wants a cell phone so useful information will always be within reach, but his parents refuse. Determined to keep researching, he tries an old-fashioned notebook and discovers that his practical solution might catch on with others.