The Farmer By Mark Ludy

THE FARMER

Intended for grades 1st through 5th

Do you know what it feels like to work so hard at something and then have all of your hard work destroyed? Have you ever had to give something up just so you could survive something like a harsh winter? Well that’s how the farmer felt in the book The Farmer by Mark Ludy. He works so hard every year to harvest his garden only to have it ruined by one thing or another. This story is about the harshness of being a farmer and how this farmer over comes the different challenges he is faced with.

In the book The Farmer, the farmer, who isn’t actually given a name in the book, is harvesting his garden for fruits and vegetables. He works so hard day and night to harvest and plant and water all of his garden, which isn’t small. The farmer is faces with different tragedies that ruin his garden and each time he has to sell one of his beloved animals so that he can survive the winter. Until one spring the unfortunate disaster is not one he was expecting. This is a really touching story and you can really feel for the farmer.

The illustrations for this book were so great. They really helped to tell the story. Every page showed in pretty good detail what was going on in this story. I think this is really helpful when reading to students so that they can actually follow along and really understand what’s going on throughout the book. Also there are some vocabulary words in this book that children may not get, so I think this book is a great help in understanding those words and expanding the students’ vocabulary. I think there are some good topics and ideas in this book that would be good to have the kids talk about in a group discussion. Overall I think this book is a good selection for a classroom in many different ways.

This book is a really good realistic fiction book to use in the classroom. I think there are a lot of good ideas in here to use as far as realism, but you could have them talk about what may not be realistic within the story. Also, like I said before, there are some really good vocabulary words that you could focus on to help broaden their vocabulary knowledge.