Farmer Boy: Full Color Edition: 2 (Little House)

Good book for 9-10 yr olds

For the price I paid I was expecting a full color edition but this one is a black and white print...

Excellent book, discriptive, well written and done in the only way that Wilder could. I love the book and look forward to reading more.

Meet Almanzo Wilder, years before he headed west and met Laura. This is the story of his childhood, and the events and people that shaped him into the man he would become. Here Almanzo lives on a big farm in New York state owned by his father. His father is a wealthy farmer, but the family works tirelessly to maintain that status. They are self-sustaining: sowing and reaping crops, building/making most of their own equipment and goods, raising livestock, and training horses and oxen. Almanzo wants nothing more than to follow in his father's footsteps, even as his older brother Royal begins to yearn for town life. He begrudges his schooling as something that gets in the way of becoming proficient on the farm, but his parents impress upon him that even farmers need an education. Still. When it's time to work the fields, everyone stays home from school and pitches in. It's a hard life, but it's a clean and proud one as well.Farmer Boy describes farm life in vivid detail, with an exceptionally strong focus on food. Seriously, the detailed descriptions of food, both in how it was prepared and in how it looked, smelled, and tasted once on the table, are mouthwatering. How things were built is also quite descriptive, with everything except dimensions spelled out as Father builds a bobsled for Almanzo to begin helping with hauling timber. It's a cheerful and optimistic look at the hard life of farming, and while the great effort and long days required of a farmer are well-covered here, there is none of the scarcity or hardship that many of the other Little House books depict. Almanzo's childhood sounds ideal, but it's really only a couple of years that are included in this book, so it makes sense that Laura only focused on the period of time she felt stood out from her own childhood. It's a heartwarming book that teaches a sense of family, hard work, and responsibility.

The 4th of July chapter is something I remember being read to when young. I never forgot it, and doubt I ever will. It's a great story to read to kids, and our generation should benefit more from lessons such as this one. Still haven't read the whole book, but even if the other chapters are half as good as the 4th of July, it'll still be very good.

This book is great. I loved it growing up, and I’m reading it aloud to my boys (7 and 9). They read well, and could read this on their own, but I read to them every night all together. It is a perfect book for this age range, and so interesting for them to understand what life was like so long ago for farmers settling in America. They keep begging me to read more chapters!

Lovely, fascinating for any age