Welcome to “What-to-Read-Wednesday!” This week, I’m sharing some sweet October-themed books, and if you read through to the end, you’ll find the link-up with even more book recommendation blog posts!
Autumn is the time of year when we notice the change in seasons so profoundly. It’s also a great time to make a learning opportunity for children.
At our house we celebrate the sudden cool temperatures after the long hot summer. We love every hint of color in the leaves. We look forward to building a fire outdoors at night when Daddy comes home. It’s an experience for all the senses!
So, discussing the seasonal changes just seems natural with young children at this time of year. This year, just by coincidence, I happened to be reading a couple of stories to my daughter, randomly grabbed off of our shelves, and they really complemented each other.
This post contains affiliate links. My website is my job, and helps to support our family. So if you decide to buy something you see mentioned here, we would be so grateful if you clicked through my links. Thank you!
The Year at Maple Hill Farm
Are you already familiar with this book? It’s a Caldecott winner, and a classic. But if you are new to it, you have GOT to have it. It’s just sweet and beautiful and great for reading over and over.
It gently takes the reader through a year on a farm, month by month, season by season. Take a look at this little paragraph from the first page:
The year is divided into twelve months,
The months are divided into week,
The weeks into days,
The days into minutes,
And on a farm something is happening every minute.
The concept of time is told through life on a farm, animals, insects, weather, food and crops, and family life. There’s so much to learn!
We have this book with the library binding; if you get a good children’s book like this one in library binding, it will hold up so much longer than a softcover edition.
Ox Cart Man
This book is on the same wavelength as The Year at Maple Hill Farm, but it’s unique in its own way. It’s also a Caldecott winner, for good reason.
The book starts on a farm in October in New England, and describes the father of the family taking his family’s farm products to town to sell. All of their hard work growing crops and making things pays off when he sells the goods in town.
He packed a bag of wool he sheared from the sheep in April.
He packed a shawl his wife wove on a loom from yarn spun at the spinning wheel from sheep sheared in April.
He packed five pairs of mittens his daughter knit from yarn spun at the spinning wheel from the sheep sheared in April.
What I like about this story is that it shows a farm family happily content to work hard, produce goods to sell, earn money, and buy what they need to do it all over again. It really makes you want to jump inside the book and live their life of hard work, good food, and well-deserved rest.
The illustrations are sweet, and remind me of primitive New-England style country.
There are two other books that follow this theme that you might be interested in. Where is the Bear? is a cute Little Golden Book that talks about fall and winter, and where the wild animals go during the cold. The tone is the same as those above: very gentle and sweet, but very informative. I also like Miracles at Maple Hill for the same reason. It’s a chapter book, and told somewhat differently than these other three, but it’s got the theme of farming, winter, and families working together. We read it quickly because my kids loved it.
You can purchase all of these books below:
Pin it!
And now for the link up!
Our hosts will still share a themed selection of our favorite books each week.
If you’d like to join us as a co-host for What to Read Wednesday, please contact Anne.
This list has our book themes, but you don’t have to stick to that to link up–any family-friendly posts are welcome. So, come on! Join in the fun!
If you’d like to link back to What to Read Wednesday, here is a pretty button for you!
Instructions: Select all code above, copy it and paste it inside your blog post as HTML
Welcome to my blog! I live in Texas with my husband and five children, and a wild assortment of dog, cats, chickens, and ducks. I’m a second-generation homeschooler, a book lover, and history enthusiast. I gush about all of these things on this blog, and I hope to share the love with you! Be sure to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Join my subscriber list for access to my FREE Download Library:
Join my community to get access to my Free Download Library, upcoming giveaways, and my latest ideas and encouragement!
Both these books look like great fall reads. Thanks for sharing!