Harvey’s Potter’s Balloon Farm

By: Jerdine Nolen

Genre: Fantasy

Grade Level: K-2

Just by reading the title and looking at the cover, you can make some predictions of what you think this book is going to be about. You are trying to figure out who Harvey is, could it be the cow on the front cover or is there a man named Harvey who’s the farmer that they just haven’t showed us what he looks like yet. Thinking that is about a balloon farm, do you think its possible to have a balloon farm? Is there any time of farm that you would want to have that you don’t normally see on an everyday basis. 

This story is about Harvey the farmer that throughout the story we find out what his farm is actually about and how its not similar to farms we have these days. There was a lot of mystery about the farm because know one really knew anything about it until this curious girl tells everyone about it through her observations. We all wonder why reading the book, how did he do it, was it magic, how can you simply make a balloon farm. Wont they all float away. Everyone was just so curious how Harvey’s farm came and how he did it, because they all thought it was impossible to have a balloon farm.

The illustrations in the book alone are amazing, I feel like you would be able to tell the story just through the pictures without even reading the words because they are that good and have so much details in them. They really help you to try to get where the book wants to take you to picture yourself in this story from the beginning.

The theme is very good for students, because it lets their imagines wonder to places that they didn’t know it could go, because you can have them thinking about what type of farm that they would want to make, and how they would compare to the story. Its telling students that is okay to have an imaginer and to think of things outside of the box because if not your life will be very boring without it. 

I really enjoyed this story, because its something different than students usually read, you normally don’t read about a balloon farm being made. You would think how is it possible because when you let go of balloons they are gone into the sky. So how does this man have a balloon farm with out them all just floating up into the sky. Its always a great book and has plenty of options to do lessons with because you can let the students imagination go to different places they want to go without them thinking that people thought they were weird or strange. It makes you the teacher even go on a little bit of a dream and make you think about what kind of farm would you grow. 

RL. 12.1 Identity the elements of plot, character and setting in a favorite story.