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The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks #1
The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
Yummie, Yummie...Dirty Socks! Michael's room was always a disaster area, strewn with all kinds of litter -- heaps of papers, piles of crumpled clothes, and dirty socks everywhere. And that was just the top layer! The trouble was, half the room belonged to Michael's brother Norman the neatness nut. It was the battle of the bedroom -- with Norman fighting to keep his spotless territory free from the invasion of Michael's mess.But that was before the appearance of the most amazing plants ever! Suddenly Michael's junk heap disappeared and the room was taken over by the two giant plants that gobbled up socks faster than anyone could supply them! And their appetites were growing bigger every day!When the plant that militant slob Michael grows from his mail-order seeds develops an appetite for dirty socks, Michael and his neatnik brother, Norman, join together to persuade their parents to let them keep the ever-growing-and voracious-greenery.
Hardcover
First published July 1, 1988
About the author
Nancy McArthur
20 books10 followersI grew up in a very small town, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. Although our neighborhood was divided into city blocks with paved streets and sidewalks, there were only two houses on our street. We had fields on both sides, and I walked to school on a well-traveled path that was a shortcut through them. This was like living in the city and the country at the same time. A few steps from our neatly mowed yard were wild strawberries, milkweed, Queen Anne's lace (wild carrot), and vast numbers of other "weeds" whose names I never knew, all changing with the seasons.
My friends and I walked or rode our bikes all over town. We spent a lot of time playing at each other's houses. About the only time we needed to be driven anywhere was Saturday or Sunday afternoon, to go to a movie in a nearby town. In winter we went sledding on a not-very-steep hill and skating on ice which the fire department made by flooding an area near the school when the temperature was below freezing. The ice was just a few inches thick on the ground, so there was no danger of falling through.
In school, I was good at reading, writing, spelling, and social studies. Math was hard for me, but I kept trying and did all right with it. Reading has always been one of my favorite things to do. My parents liked to read, so our house was always full of books, newspapers, and magazines. They always gave me books in addition to my other presents for Christmas and birthdays. Some of my favorites were "Ferdinand" (I loved the pictures), "Caddie Woodlawn," "Treasure Island," "Little Women," and Nancy Drew books. Getting my first library card also opened up even wider worlds to me through reading.
I got interested in writing on my own outside of school when I was ten or eleven. An aunt gave me a page-a-day diary, and I started writing in that, a sentence or two a day about what I was doing. Then my father brought home an old typewriter. I wanted to play with it, so I wrote a little story about something our family had done. That gave me such a great sense of accomplishment that I wanted to do more. By the time I was thirteen, my New Year's resolutions included "to write more stories and get one published." About a year later, I had an article published in my high school newspaper. It was a dream come true, and I kept writing.
After college, where I was editor of the student newspaper, I worked in writing jobs, mostly in public relations, and wrote articles for magazines and newspapers in my spare time. Then I got a part-time job teaching journalism at Baldwin-Wallace College and started writing books.
My friends and I walked or rode our bikes all over town. We spent a lot of time playing at each other's houses. About the only time we needed to be driven anywhere was Saturday or Sunday afternoon, to go to a movie in a nearby town. In winter we went sledding on a not-very-steep hill and skating on ice which the fire department made by flooding an area near the school when the temperature was below freezing. The ice was just a few inches thick on the ground, so there was no danger of falling through.
In school, I was good at reading, writing, spelling, and social studies. Math was hard for me, but I kept trying and did all right with it. Reading has always been one of my favorite things to do. My parents liked to read, so our house was always full of books, newspapers, and magazines. They always gave me books in addition to my other presents for Christmas and birthdays. Some of my favorites were "Ferdinand" (I loved the pictures), "Caddie Woodlawn," "Treasure Island," "Little Women," and Nancy Drew books. Getting my first library card also opened up even wider worlds to me through reading.
I got interested in writing on my own outside of school when I was ten or eleven. An aunt gave me a page-a-day diary, and I started writing in that, a sentence or two a day about what I was doing. Then my father brought home an old typewriter. I wanted to play with it, so I wrote a little story about something our family had done. That gave me such a great sense of accomplishment that I wanted to do more. By the time I was thirteen, my New Year's resolutions included "to write more stories and get one published." About a year later, I had an article published in my high school newspaper. It was a dream come true, and I kept writing.
After college, where I was editor of the student newspaper, I worked in writing jobs, mostly in public relations, and wrote articles for magazines and newspapers in my spare time. Then I got a part-time job teaching journalism at Baldwin-Wallace College and started writing books.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
May 26, 2025
Recently, I saw a GR member's rating for this book, and the memories came flooding back! I recall reading this book aloud to my Grade 2 classes over several years, and every year, the students loved it!
Science fiction at its funniest!
Science fiction at its funniest!
March 28, 2016
I love, love, LOVED these books as a kid! As I recall, it was one that my mom read to me, and she loved them too. In fact, to this day, there are two rather large plants in our house that are named Fluffy and Stanley, after the sock-eating plants of these books. (One of our plants is a variety of palm tree and the other is...um...I'm not quite sure, but it's slowly taking over the world).
Definitely a fun, silly, and funny must-read series for young kids.
Definitely a fun, silly, and funny must-read series for young kids.
March 2, 2026
UPDATE around 12/15/2025: I found out the boys never finished this book. Little Hoyt said it was boring. I guess books today cannot compete with Xbox or other gaming crap or even those stupid YouTube shorts videos. So sad!
The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks #1 by Nancy McArthur (1988 hardcover), 119 pages.
Accelerated Reading Program: 4th-8th grade
AR points: 4.0
Level: 4.1
This is an absolute fabulous and funny little story. It was highly recommended by Goodreads reader, Debbie W., who was a teacher and read it to her second grade class every year.
My ex-daughter-in-law is a second grade teacher and I do like to keep my eyes out for good books to go on her shelf.
But, as I started reading, I notice it was about two young brothers, three years apart…just like her boy’s. The older brother was very messy and the younger brother was a neat freak…and they shared a room. Hm! Just like her two boys.
So, you know what I did? I changed the boy’s names throughout the book to Hanson, the older, and Hoyt, the younger. The friend’s names in the story were changed to real friend’s names. The principal’s name was changed to their real principal, etc… I was even mentioned when they called their grandma. I changed that to Lolli.
My two grandsons are in 4th and 2nd grade. They are the perfect age for this book right now. They will be so interested in finding out what their own person does in the story, which is a lot like their behavior. I hope this encourages them to want to read more.
BOOK SERIES
#1 - The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#2 - The Return of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#3 - The Escape Of The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#4 - The Secret Of The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#5 - More Adventures Of The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#6 - The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Up In Space
#7 - The Mystery Of The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#8 - The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Gets A Girlfriend
#9 - The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Hollywood
The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks #1 by Nancy McArthur (1988 hardcover), 119 pages.
Accelerated Reading Program: 4th-8th grade
AR points: 4.0
Level: 4.1
This is an absolute fabulous and funny little story. It was highly recommended by Goodreads reader, Debbie W., who was a teacher and read it to her second grade class every year.
My ex-daughter-in-law is a second grade teacher and I do like to keep my eyes out for good books to go on her shelf.
But, as I started reading, I notice it was about two young brothers, three years apart…just like her boy’s. The older brother was very messy and the younger brother was a neat freak…and they shared a room. Hm! Just like her two boys.
So, you know what I did? I changed the boy’s names throughout the book to Hanson, the older, and Hoyt, the younger. The friend’s names in the story were changed to real friend’s names. The principal’s name was changed to their real principal, etc… I was even mentioned when they called their grandma. I changed that to Lolli.
My two grandsons are in 4th and 2nd grade. They are the perfect age for this book right now. They will be so interested in finding out what their own person does in the story, which is a lot like their behavior. I hope this encourages them to want to read more.
BOOK SERIES
#1 - The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#2 - The Return of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#3 - The Escape Of The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#4 - The Secret Of The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#5 - More Adventures Of The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#6 - The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Up In Space
#7 - The Mystery Of The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks
#8 - The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Gets A Girlfriend
#9 - The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Hollywood
November 20, 2013
Oh. My. Gosh. This book was amazing to me as a child. I found it in the school library and couldn't get enough. It's such an odd idea, but it really works. I liked the family relationships. They seemed so real. If you can find it in print, read it! I liked it enough as a child to buy the sequels with a Christmas bookstore gift certificate (no, not a gift card; a certificate. I'm old, ok?), and choosing books to buy in those days was a very serious thing. It was such a rare thing that I almost never bought books I hadn't read because I might buy something stupid. But since this book was so good, I could trust that the sequels would be, too.
March 21, 2021
We came across this book in one of our Writing with Ease lessons and DD really wanted to read the whole thing. It's not in print but we were able to find a used copy. It is such a fun book!
April 19, 2025
CW: secrets
Two brothers grow plants from mystery seeds that grow fast. Turns out that they feed on the socks in the boys room. There are plant burps, letters to the editor, and sleepover hijinks galore. A favourite classroom read for good reason.
Two brothers grow plants from mystery seeds that grow fast. Turns out that they feed on the socks in the boys room. There are plant burps, letters to the editor, and sleepover hijinks galore. A favourite classroom read for good reason.
April 25, 2018
We read a portion of this story in Writing with Ease and it intrigued my students. We had a hard time finding it and ended up with an old copy off of Amazon. My students enjoyed it immensely and I will use it as a read aloud in the future. However, personally, I did not care for the ending. I felt it was uneventful for how they led up to it.
March 6, 2019
5 stars for nostalgic reasons--I loved this series when I read it in the late 90s.
August 20, 2019
Read this as a bedtime book with my 8 year old, and it had him giggling just about every night. Great story!
August 27, 2019
I loved these books as a kid when my 2nd grade teacher read them to us. However, as an adult it’s a little silly. I still enjoyed it though!
January 8, 2019
Michael receives some seeds in the mail, and the plants that sprout from them get BIG real fast, and they have a strange appetite for socks! I loved this book as a kid and read it several times. I found my old copy while unpacking a box and read it to my kids. They loved the relationship between the two brothers, messy Michael and younger brother Norman who is a neat freak. Reading it now, it's plain to see the book is mostly farce, with the brothers constantly having to hide their plants' funny antics. But the plants themselves always added a cool hint of sci-fi mystery. Where did they really come from? And why do they eat socks? What will they eventually grow into?
On an added note, I went online to look up the author (Nancy McArthur) and to see if she wrote anything else. Imagine my surprise when I discovered she wrote eight other books in the series! If you loved this book, then go read the sequels! They're just as funny, and they always take you just a few steps closer to discovering the origin of the plants. At least, I hope so. I haven't gotten to the end of the series yet.
If Ms. McArthur ever reads any of the reviews on here, I'd like to thank her for writing this book. It's brought many happy moments into my life and the lives of my kids.
On an added note, I went online to look up the author (Nancy McArthur) and to see if she wrote anything else. Imagine my surprise when I discovered she wrote eight other books in the series! If you loved this book, then go read the sequels! They're just as funny, and they always take you just a few steps closer to discovering the origin of the plants. At least, I hope so. I haven't gotten to the end of the series yet.
If Ms. McArthur ever reads any of the reviews on here, I'd like to thank her for writing this book. It's brought many happy moments into my life and the lives of my kids.
March 30, 2022
This book is hilarious. Both the reader (opa) and audience (my 8 year-old grandson) laughed and laughed. We laughed so hard a few times, it was hard to continue reading. My grandson rates this a full 8-stars.
August 11, 2016
When I was a kid, I thought this book was the funniest thing in the entire universe. I should track down a copy and see if it's as great as I remember.
January 9, 2018
One of my coworkers brought this up as a childhood favorite, so I ordered a used copy from Amazon. It was goofy and relatively amusing, as I remember a lot of the kids' books from that time period being.
While we were discussing it, a student came into the library.
"Hey!" says my coworker. "Would you read a book called 'The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks?'"
"Um...do I have other options?"
Books for kids are still silly and fun (see Captain Underpants, Dan Gutman's 'My Weird School' series, etc.) I think that overall, though, we have a much better selection for them today. It's almost as if publishing has figured out that kids are people too, with complex ideas and more on their mind than the possibility of sock-eating plants.
The kid in me still wants a giant alien plant, though.
While we were discussing it, a student came into the library.
"Hey!" says my coworker. "Would you read a book called 'The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks?'"
"Um...do I have other options?"
Books for kids are still silly and fun (see Captain Underpants, Dan Gutman's 'My Weird School' series, etc.) I think that overall, though, we have a much better selection for them today. It's almost as if publishing has figured out that kids are people too, with complex ideas and more on their mind than the possibility of sock-eating plants.
The kid in me still wants a giant alien plant, though.
January 19, 2026
This was mostly a nostalgia read for me, it was a nice flashback but the story really doesn't hold up well. It's like a goosebumps book but without the pretense of scariness. It reads like it started out as a story made up by a mom to get her kids to keep their room clean...which is pretty lame. This is one of those stories that probably should have 3/4 of it cut and then turned into a picture book because most of it felt like filler for an already thin story. You might be expecting some mystery to surround the plants or for something aside from the title of the book to happen but it doesn't. Instead of a mystery or a thriller the book is just about two boys trying to figure out how to keep their plants.
February 19, 2025
I have read this one countless times as a child and to my own children. I just finished reading to my five year old and wasn't sure how much he would be able to absorb. The whole thing apparently! He laughed so hard at all the funny parts that we had to sometimes stop reading just til he could get all the giggles out. He begged me to read it again as soon as the book ended. What can I say, this book is timeless and absolutely perfect for any boy that has ever collected junk or wanted a pet!
August 7, 2018
This book made me laugh out loud at the boys antics. Loved the idea of plants that eat socks and burp. The names of the plants, Fluffy and Stanley, were great too. I am going to try this out with my class now.
March 19, 2019
I vaguely remember reading this back when I was a kid. Actually I think we listened to it on audio. Now I'm wondering if I want to reread it. I enjoyed it back then. But I might not now.
Oh well. Maybe I will maybe I won't
Oh well. Maybe I will maybe I won't
March 21, 2023
This is . . . something. My kids (8 & 10) thought this was absolutely hilarious. It's kind of like Little Shop of Horrors, if Audrey II ate socks instead of people. It's funny, I guess . . . moreso if you're a little kid.
May 29, 2025
My husband suggested this book as a favorite of his childhood. As an adult, it was funny to see this book unfold. I have to say I definitely recommend it for anyone with kids or who just wants an easy read.
April 19, 2018
This book was really weird.
February 19, 2019
It was cute... but I would recommend to only 10- I also think it could use editing! I gave it to my little sister and she loved it so did plenty of the younger kids in my homeschool class
August 6, 2020
I loved this book as a kid! I just finished reading it to my girls. and they loved it just as much as I did.
January 23, 2021
I thought this book was hilarious as a kid, and my kids enjoyed it too. It's silly, but fun.
February 20, 2021
My 5 & 7 year old laughed constantly during this book!
March 7, 2022
Fun and quite inventive
December 15, 2022
Fun, nostalgic kids book that may leave adults wanting more.
January 29, 2023
A funny fiction.
March 8, 2023
This series was my favorite as a kid! Reading them now to my five year old and he's loving them too.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews