The Farm That Feeds Us: A year in the life of an organic farm is an 80-page nonfiction picture book. I feel that it has the most appeal to a narrow age group, probably first and second graders. The Farm That Feeds Us is too dense to appeal to younger children, but older children probably feel like they are beyond children's books.
Broken into sections by the four seasons, The Farm That Feeds Us covers various farming activities in no particular order other than the seasonal theme. Each spread covers one topic and then moves to the next. This is not a sun-up to sun-down description of activities, but covers everything from crop growing to animal husbandry to jam making. Every once in awhile there is some shorter, more poetic text to break up the larger informative paragraphs. Perhaps this text could be used by parents to make a shorter version for younger kids. I will admit, even I learned a few things from this book.
There are things to appreciate. The Farm That Feeds Us is very informative. It also has a focus on ethical consumerism and the advantages of patronizing smaller farms. It might also get kids interested in trying some new fruits and vegetables after they read about them. The art doesn't do much for me, but I think it has kid appeal and it is easy to tell what is happening on each page. I do like that a variety of people are shown throughout the book.
I think The Farm That Feeds Us has noble goals, but I wouldn't expect most kids to be all that interested.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for commenting! To reduce spam I moderate all posts older than 14 days.