J. Jupiter Jackson, a potato farmer, discovers he is a genius at jigsaw puzzles, and so one winter he leaves the farm and his animals to seek fame and fortune.
Jigsaw Jackson
Farm life
Carlos And The Squash Plant / Carlos Y La Planta De Calabaza
Having ignored his mother’s warnings about what will happen if he doesn’t bathe after working on his family’s New Mexican farm, Carlos awakens one morning to find a squash growing out of his ear.
Kitten’s Spring
This beautifully illustrated picture book — a fantastic read-aloud — introduces toddlers to animals and the sounds they make.
Farmer Duck
Farmer Duck isn’t your average duck. This duck cooks and cleans, tends the fields, and cares for the other animals on the farm—all because the owner of the farm is too lazy to do these things himself. But when Farmer Duck finally collapses from exhaustion, the farmyard animals come to the rescue with a simple but heroic plan.
Marta Y La Bicicleta/Marta and the Bicycle (Spanish Edition)
While the other cows on Monsieur Gruyere’s farm dream about becoming train engineers, Marta opts to ride the much quieter bicycle, and after a year of practice, becomes a skilled rider.
If You Didn’t Have Me
Spending most of a year with relatives on a farm in southern Sweden while his parents are busy building a new house in town, a young boy finds inner strengths and unexpected sources of entertainment.
Strawberry Girl 60th Anniversary Edition (Trophy Newbery)
The land was theirs, but so were its hardships
Strawberries — big, ripe, and juicy. Ten-year-old Birdie Boyer can hardly wait to start picking them. But her family has just moved to the Florida backwoods, and they haven’t even begun their planting. “Don’t count your biddies ‘fore they’re hatched, gal young un!” her father tells her.
Making the new farm prosper is not easy. There is heat to suffer through, and droughts, and cold snaps. And, perhaps most worrisome of all for the Boyers, there are rowdy neighbors, just itching to start a feud.
How I Live Now (Michael L Printz Award Book (Awards))
“Every war has turning points and every person too.”
Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.
As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.
A riveting and astonishing story.
A Gathering Of Days
The journal of a fourteen-year-old girl, kept the last year she lived on the family farm, records daily events in her small New Hampshire town, her father’s remarriage, and the death of her best friend.
The Rowdy, Rowdy Ranch / Alla En El Rancho Grande
On El Rancho Grande, the grandchildren are not so interested in how Grandpa bought the ranch, but in what can be done on the ranch. The children play hide and seek in cornfields, under “the canopy of green leaves, golden threads and giant ears of corn.” They feed the family horses, ride the rambunctious pigs, and take frolicking dips in the duck pond. But through all of the outdoor escapades, their family stories are circling in the air, like the “sunflower wind” blooming around them. While drinking ice-cold lemonade in the sunshine, they hear about how Grandpa’s song of sorrow won him El Rancho. They hear about chickens that have abandoned their coops to live in Abuela’s chicken tree, and they even discover a story about a boy who cried chocolate tears. In those days of running and jumping, the narrator, Tito, did not realize that he was hearing the stories that would wrap him up “like an enchanted sarape to keep me warm for the rest of [his] life.”