This intimate novel, written in stanza form, poetically conveys the head dust and wind of Oklahoma along with the discontent of narrator Billie Jo who relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during Dust Bowl years of the Depression. ALA notable children's book, ALA best book for Young Adults, SLJ best book of the year.
This work of fiction is a great tool to introduce nutrition to younger audiences and encourage them to eat vegetables. This title might mislead you to think the vegetables in the book are spoiling but the story is really about vegetables behaving badly because Ivy refused to eat them. Instead of eating her vegetables, Ivy stuffed them into her pocket. At night when she is sleeping, the vegetables form a taunting chorus in Ivy's sleep and invade her dreams with nasty songs. No matter how Ivy tries to run from this nightmare, the vegetables chase her down and continue their harassment. Once she admits she likes vegetables, the nightmare stops.
One day, Kansas wakes up grumpy. The other 49 states are stretching, yawning, and pouring maple syrup onto each other's pancakes, but irritable Kansas announces to his neighbor Nebraska that life is dull and changes must be made. This fun book describes the initial excitement and new arrangements made when the states decide to trade places. Read the book to find out if they ever get back home in the right place.
Never. Not a chance. Annalisa wouldn't dream of kissing Luella the cow, even though her mother kisses her every day after singing her a song and milking her. Still, inquisitive Annalisa is awfully interested in milking Luella, and one day she sneaks off and does everything just the way her mother does - except for the kiss on the nose. Will Annalisa's innate curiosity get the best of her?
When Annabelle gives birth to her calf, she also begins to produce milk. The milk is then processed into cheese, and from the cheese, pizza is made. An excellent nonfiction look at milk production.
Alice doesn't need a weather forecast to tell if it's going to snow. She can feel it in her toes and elbows and nose. Each time she feels a twitch or a tingle, she warns her neighbors. 'There's snow coming,' she tells Etta and Gretta Grillo. 'I can feel it in my toe!' Like Alice's other neighbors, the Grillo sisters laugh and ignore her warning. But sure enough, the snow falls and catches everyone by surprise— everyone that is except Alice, who has loaded in her supplies. But now she feels a big snowstorm coming. And still her neighbors ignore her warnings. What will Alice do?
A day comes, after the leaves have fallen and the wild geese have left for warmer places, when the air holds its breath, still and full of expectation. Snow is coming, and soon farmland and forest, ground and sky will be transformed. This story tells about two brothers waiting and watching for the first snow of winter. *This book is no longer in print, but is readily available through the Public Library System.
*Recommended Common Core Reading First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads-driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.
This highly readable portrait is about the Okies driven to California by the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s and the formidable hardships they faced. The desperation of their lives in the Midwest is described and then we follow the Okes on their trek across the western United States to the promise of work in California, where their hopes are dashed. Weedpatch Camp is the farm-labor camp built by the federal government, that educator Leo Hart creates a federal emergency school. The book includes period black and white photographs depicting the hardships and the school.
While tracing the development of an apple tree from bud to fruit, Schnieper highlights the progress of an apple tree through the four seasons. The book provides an overview of life in an orchard. Beautiful full-color photos and black-and-white line drawings highlight and elucidate the text. An excellent explanation of grafting is also included.
By featuring a single cow (Clarabelle) and her calf on a large, modern-day Wisconsin dairy farm, Peterson describes all the latest technology that enables farmers to create energy and other by-products from their herds. And yet none of the modern-day machinery matches the miracle of production that is the cow herself. Vibrant, close-up photographs capture Clarabelle with her herdmates and her newborn calf as well as the family members of Norswiss Farm who live and work together.
Here, in their second stunning collaboration, Diane Siebert and Wendell Minor create a joyful, singing celebration of this country's Heartland, the Midwest. It is a land where wheat fields grow and cornfields stretch across the plains to create a patchwork quilt in hues of yellow, green, and brown; a land where herds of cattle graze in pastures draped in lush, green grass, and a newborn calf stands in the sun. And upon this land toils the farmer, strong and proud, whose weathered face tells a tale of a life of work that's never done. The Heartland's a land where, despite man's power, nature reigns.