Michelle Obama, author

Next spring, when the warm weather brings on thoughts of gardening and summer harvest, Michelle Obama will publish her first book. “American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspired Families, Schools and Communities” will be served up in April 2012.

It’s the first book for the first lady, who went to Harvard Law and Princeton after starting out in Chicago’s public schools. Her work life has included being a lawyer, community activist and staffer at the University of Chicago. During her marriage to Barack Obama, he’s published three books: “Dreams From My Father,” “The Audacity of Hope” and “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.”

Michelle Obama’s kitchen garden is the first to be planted at the White House since since Eleanor Roosevelt’s World War II Victory Garden. The fight now is not about trying to make it with scarce resources, as it was then, but about having too much. Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions, we are told, and the White House garden is an example of growing vegetables and fruits to eat more healthfully. It’s also about sharing that story, which Michelle Obama has done in the past by opening the garden to journalists and school tours.

That story will be told in “American Grown,” which publisher Crown promises will include “ideas and resources for readers to get involved in the movement to create community, school, and urban gardens, support local farmers’ markets, and make small lifestyle changes to achieve big health results.”