Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family's Farm [Hardcover]

Michael J. Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2008 | Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Our Farm is a real-life look at a family and the farm they work together, season by season. Told through the voices of the children, this inside view of life on their farm is authentic and sometimes surprising. Readers will learn about baling hay, tending cattle, work dogs, hunting, manure, and other activities on the Bennett farm, as well as some insights into the culture of living in a rural area.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 3–7—Through this photographic journal, readers are invited to share one year on an Ohio farm, complete with children, animals, and enough work, adventure, and fun to keep everyone busy. Keeping his commentary to a minimum, Rosen records conversations and comments made mostly by the young Bennetts. Their voices are strong and wise, revealing knowledge about life, death, hunting, reproduction, economics, and the importance of community and family. "If a cow dies, Dad scoops it up with a skid steer bucket and carries it over to the woods, far from the house, because it stinks for a while," 10-year-old Cayne observes matter-of-factly. "We always have a fort up in the hayloft, but…the cows eventually eat the whole fort" (Grey, age 8). "It [corralling cows] can be dangerous…" Chase (15) explains, "…but cows prefer to kick to the side; you're usually safe so long as you're straight behind them." Sensitive to the fact that some people might consider them "a bunch of farm hicks," Chase points out that his school "has scored among the top Ohio schools in the proficiency tests." More comprehensive than Raymond Bial's Portrait of a Farm Family (Houghton, 1995), this engaging book is an unsentimental, appreciative look into the world of one farm family. It's packed with information and plenty of interesting photographs. Children will love it.—Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Michael J. Rosen is the author of Balls! and Balls! Round 2 and has written more than 70 books for kids and adults. He lives in Glenford, Ohio.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Darby Creek Publishing (September 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1581960670
• ISBN-13: 978-1581960679
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Greetings and thanks for welcoming me into your home. Since I write books for both young readers and adults, I've cooked up two long-winded paragraphs.

Kids first: So, I'm the author of some four dozen books for children of all ages. The fall of 2011 brings four new titles: MY DOG! A Kid's Guide to Keeping a Happy & Healthy Dog (the idea go-to dog guide for families); a pop-up book with Robert Sabuda, Chanukah Lights, which just received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly: "A stunning achievement"; The Hound Dog's Haiku and Other Poems for Dog Lovers, illustrated with Mary Azarian's woodcuts; and Night of the Pumpkinheads, illustrated entirely with extraordinary jack-o'-lanterns.
Other favorites are The Cuckoo's Haiku and Other Poems for Birders; Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family's Farm (which I both wrote and illustrated with some 400 photographs); A Drive in the Country; Don't Shoot!; A School for Pompey Walker, and Elijah's Angel. (And, yes, there's the Britiish Michael--no "J."--Rosen whose many books are often confused with mine.) For over 35 years, ever since working as a counselor, water-safety instructor, and art teacher at local community centers, I've been engaged with young children, their parents and teachers. As a visiting author, in-service speaker, and workshop leader, I frequently travel to schools and conferences around the nation, sharing stories, poems, creativity, and humor.

Several of my books here show my work as editor/anthologist or illustrator. It has been my privilege to have enlisted hundreds of other authors and artists to create 15 philanthropic books that aid in the fight to end childhood hunger through Share Our Strength's national efforts, or that offer care to less fortunate companion animals through The Company of Animals Fund, a granting program I administered for a dozen years.

Now, for adults. I can start by saying I'm a poet. I went to Columbia from 1979-1981, and received my MFA there. Poems are now collected in three volumes, which are all featured here at Amazon. Moving home to Ohio, I worked as an illustrator (while in NYC, I began selling spot illustrations to The New Yorker and Gourmet magazines); one of my first real clients was The Thurber House, the soon-to-be-restored home of Columbus's native son, James Thurber. For almost twenty years, I helped to restore the home, develop the programs there, and edit much of Thurber's uncollected work. (Those volumes are also featured here.) It was there, I began to edit short story anthologies, commission great writers to contribute to books about dogs, horses, and even VW Beetles. That's also where I started Mirth of a Nation, a three-volume humor biennial that constitutes almost 2,000 pages of the best contemporary humor.

Most recently, I've been working in humorous nonfiction. No Dribbling the Squid features profiles of 70-some of the world's most wayward competitions. (You can see the Web site and Facebook pages, as well.) And, most recently, there's Any Body's Guess: Quirky Quizzes About What Makes You Tick.

Otherwise, my Website has a good deal about my life on the 100-acre farm I share in Central Ohio. Thanks again for reading along with me.

www.fidosopher.com

for lots more about MY DOG!, including recipes, training tips, cool projects, games, and so forth: www.workman.com/mydog

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chapters are narrated in quotes of various family members, and illustrated with beautiful color photography, November 16, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family's Farm (Hardcover)

Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family's Farm is a densely packed, 144-page nonfiction book portraying the many aspects of day-to-day life on an Ohio family farm. From raising chickens and cows, to delivering calves, disposing of manure, showing pigs at a fair, hunting, cleaning and cooking animals for their meat, putting together square bales of hay and much more, Our Farm gives a living, breathing, look at the hard work, good food, fun, and challenges that flows by in the yearly turn of a farm's seasons. Chapters are narrated in quotes of various family members, and illustrated with beautiful color photography on virtually every page. Highly recommended, especially for public and school library collections, Our Farm is a vital educational resource particularly given how today's American society is increasingly estranged from its agricultural roots.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book for any age!, November 13, 2008

By 

ShyViolet (IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family's Farm (Hardcover)

I really loved reading this book! The book is written for children but I enjoyed reading it and I am 41 years old! The book made me think about the dreams that I had as a child of living on a farm when I grew up. That dream never came to fruition but reading this book helped to give me a more realistic idea of what living on a livestock farm would be like. I immediately got into the story and I read in amazement all the kinds of experiences the children have lived through. As a parent, I enjoyed seeing this family working together - everyone has a job and they all seem to enjoy helping to make their farm a sucess. What a wonderful childhood these children are having! Thanks to their family and Michael J. Rosen for letting us share a bit of it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a book for rural kids and city kids alike, September 3, 2008

By 

2ManyCooks "avid reader, avid cook...just an ... (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Our Farm: Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family's Farm (Hardcover)

With hundreds of photographs and the narration of five kids between the ages of 4 and 18, OUR FARM packs a world of reality into 144 pages. It's a funny, accessible, truly heartfelt visit with a small-farm family that should be a mirror for any farm kid or rural family, or a window for kids who can't quite imagine a life outside a city...a life where chicks grow up in your living room, your backyard is filled with calves and your own swimming hole/fishing pond, your barn is filled with every sort of farm machine (all of which your border collie tries to herd!). Divided into four seasons, the book is a thoughtful chronicle of what it means to grow up living on the land, living with animals (wild and domestic), living without close neighbors or shopping malls, living in a community of generous people, many of whom, have spent their whole lives in the area.

And for middle-grader readers, there's plenty of intriguing and somewhat startling details about the challenges of farm life: animal losses, hauling tons of manure, providing meats for the table--all in the farm kids' voices.

A fascinating book for kids from...third grade through high school, I'd say. A perfect gift for anyone who's connected with 4-H, FFA, or any sort of farm. It's a great addition to classroom curricula on ecology and conservation, communities, Ohio or Appalachian culture and history.