Saving Strawberry farm

Saving Strawberry Farm

Author: Deborah Hopkinson

Illustrator: Rachel Isadora

Copyright Harper Collins, 2005

32 pages

Historical Fiction

 

                I chose this book because the title intrigued me. I’m glad that I picked this book because it is a wonderful book. This story takes place in the middle of the great depression. Times were tough for a little boy named Davey and his sister Rosie. Their father had a job but had recently lost it along with many other of the men in their town. Davey thought back to how their lives had been before his dad lost his job, filled with a full refrigerator and ice box along with sweet lemonade that his mother made. It was the Fourth of July and Davey’s father said even though times were tough they still were going to celebrate their country’s independence. So Davey and his sister headed out to get some ice to make lemonade. When they arrived at the store they ran into Miss Elsie who owned the towns beautiful strawberry farm that had the sweetest juiciest strawberries. However times were hard for her to, when Davey asked if he could work on her farm next year she simply said it may not be there. Miss Elsie was going to loose her farm to the bank that night at five O’clock. However the ice man had a great idea they should all go to the auction and have a penny auction that way she could afford to buy her farm back. So Davey and Rosie go through the town and tell everyone of their plan. The auction was that night, do they save Miss Elsie’s farm? Does the bank buy it? You have got to read Saving Strawberry Farm to find out.

                The illustrations in this book were beautiful. They were drawn using colored pencils, and water colors. I think that the way that the illustrator captured the facial expressions of the children and the town people during the depression was wonderful. You could really see that they were suffering and were in a hard time. The colors were bright when they needed to be, but when it was showing the houses and towns people working for money the pictures were drawn to accompany the heartache they must have felt. The text in the book was mostly in text boxes at the bottom or sides of the page. I think that this story would be better suited for second grade through sixth grade. However a first grade teacher could read this to her students, because it may be too hard for them to read on their own.

                The classroom connections with this story could be a history, writing, and personal connections. The teacher can talk to the students about what the Great Depression was. Most students would not know what it was because it happened so long ago and most of the people that lived during it are not around. The teacher could do a history lesson on what happened and the students could find someone that they know or may know that was alive during the great depression and find out what it was like for them to be alive then. The students could write about the differences between now and then. For instance in the story they have an icebox and have to buy ice, and candy was less than a penny. The students can write about how different things are now. Lastly the students can write about how they would feel if they were in Davey or Rosie’s shoes. How it would be to go from having a lot of things to nothing. Some of them may have experienced that and could even write about that.