Agriculture-Related Books
Agricultural Economics
Return to Sender
Yearling, 2010
Grades 6-9
After 11-year-old Tyler's father is injured in a tractor accident, the family is in danger of losing their dairy farm. Desperate for help, Tyler's family employs a family of undocumented Mexican laborers, the Cruz family, to move into a trailer on the farm and run the farm. The extended families grow close over the course of one year with holiday celebrations and shared gatherings.
What is Trade? (Economics in Action)
Crabtree, 2008
Grades 4-6
Carefully explains how countries around the world engage in trade.
Voices from the Fields: Children of Migrant Farmworkers Tell Their Stories
Little Brown, 2000
Grades 4-6
A compendium of interviews, poems and photographs spotlighting nine migrant Mexican-American children in California's Salinas Valley.
Cesar: Si, Se Puede! Yes, We Can!
Marshall Cavendish, 2005
Grades 6-8
Poetry and illustrations highlight Cesar Chavez' struggle to empower migrant workers using peaceful protest.
Cesar Chavez: The Farm Workers' Best Friend (American Heroes)
Benchmark, 2009
Grades 4-6
Under the Same Sky
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005
Grades 5-9
Joe Pedersen, 14, begrudgingly joins the migrant workers on his father's upstate New York farm to earn the $1,000 he needs to buy a Thunderbird motorbike. Determined to show his father he can keep pace with Manuel, the 16-year-old crew boss, Joe painfully adjusts to the grueling routine of planting, hoeing and weeding cabbages and picking strawberries. Previously insensitive to the plight of the migrants, Joe begins to grasp the hardships, uncertainty, loyalty and courage of these laborers who are often ridiculed and threatened by his peers and other whites in the community.
One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folk Tale
Scholastic, 1996
Grades K-2
The story of Rani, a clever girl who outsmarts a very selfish raja and saves her village. When offered a reward for a good deed, she asks only for one grain of rice, doubled each day for 30 days. Remember your math? That's lots of rice: enough to feed a village for a good long time--and to teach a greedy raja a lesson.
Market Day: A Story Told With Folk Art
Voyager, 2002
Grades PreK-2
The illustrations are from folk art around the world, with bright visions of chickens, veggies, farms and the road to the market. The varied countries of origin for the folk art are listed.
Leah's Pony
Boyds Mills, 1996
Grades preK-3
Amid the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, Leah's father is faced with the loss of the family farm and puts his farm and equipment up for auction, but Leah comes up with the money by selling her beloved pony.
My Migrant Family Story
Pinata, 2013
Grades 5 and up
Autobiographical vignettes about the trip the author's family took each year from McAllen, Texas, to Michigan to pick summer crops.
The World Trade Organization (Opposing Viewpoints)
Greenhaven, 2010
Young Adult
The Milkman's Boy
Walker, Walker, 1997
Grades PreK-2
Paul Graves is coming of age during a time when horses and carriages shared roads with Model Ts, and new technology changed old ways of doing things. His father calls the new invention of pasteurization nothing but a fad . . . until one day a fever strikes Paul's sister, and his family learns a hard lesson about the need to balance change and tradition.
Unusual Farms
Compass Point, 2004
Grades 1-3
Provides high quality photos and brief explanations for ostrich, bison, llama, fish, silk, tree and bamboo farms.
Saving Strawberry Farm
Greenwillow, 2005
Grades PreK-3
Like everyone else in the small midwestern town, Davy's family is struggling to survive the mean, hot summer of 1933. Davy is delighted when his neighbor, Miss Elsie, tips him a penny for carrying her groceries, until he learns she is about to lose her strawberry farm at a bank auction. When another neighbor proposes that the town stage a "penny auction," Davy spreads the word, and, later, it's his penny that starts the bidding low enough to enable Miss Elsie to buy her own farm. Most powerful are the close-up scenes of a community surviving the Depression with creativity and spirit.
Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez
Harcourt, 2003
The story of Cesar Chavez's 340-mile march to protest the working conditions of migrant farmworkers in California. Readers meet Chavez at his grandparents' home in Arizona where he lived happily amid a large extended family. His childhood was cut short when, due to financial difficulties, the family was forced to move to California to seek employment. After years of laboring in the fields, Chavez became increasingly disturbed by the inhuman living conditions imposed by the growers. The text is largely limited to one side of a spread; beautifully rendered earth-toned illustrations flow out from behind the words and onto the facing page.
To Market, To Market
Abrams, 2011
Grades PreK-3
With her distinctive cut-paper artistry, McClure follows a young boy and his mother on market day when they shop for apples, kale, honey, smoked salmon and other green-market items and traces each to its source. Kids will love learning how milk is curdled and honey collected from hives.
Fair Trade (Current Controversies)
Greenhaven, 2010
Young Adult
Farmers Market
Sandpiper, 2003
Grades 4-8
The story, set in the American Southwest, is of a family trip to the farmer's market through the eyes of small girl.
Bread and Roses, Too
Sandpiper, 2008
Grades 4-6
Paterson has drawn upon the facts of the famous 1912 Bread and Roses strike in he mills of Lawrence, MA, and the sympathetic response of the citizens of Barre, VT, to tell the story of two children enmeshed in complex events.
Farmer's Market: Families Working Together
Carolrhoda, 2001
Grades 3-6
An introduction to farmers' markets, with photos, as seen through the eyes of two successful truck-farming families. A brief overview of a Minnesota farmer's market leads to introductions of two local families: the Thaos, of Hmong descent, and the Kornders, of Polish-German ancestry. Emphasizing the family cooperation required to keep a farm going, and with a special focus on the children's participation, the book also concentrates on moments in the growing season, from the planting of greenhouse seedlings to fall harvests, noting farming techniques and equipment. Nice attention is also given to the international variety of foods and specialties available at market. Readers, particularly urban kids, will learn much from this attractive photo-essay that shows what's so special about farmers' markets: you meet the people who grow the food.
Esperanza Rising
Scholastic, 2002
Grades 4-6
Esperanza's mother escapes her stepbrothers, who are holding her as a social and economic hostage, by moving with Esperanza to the US to work in California's agricultural industry. Set against the multiethnic, labor-organizing era of the Depression, this book should make good classroom discussion.
Follow That Food: Distribution of Resources (Raintree Fusion: Social Studies)
Heinemann-Raintree, 2007
Grades 4-6
How food gets from farm to table.
The Hard-Times Jar
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003
Grades PreK-2
Emma and her family are migrant workers who follow the crops to make a living. Passionate about books, the girl longs for a store-bought volume but knows that the few coins her mother saves in a jar are for no-money days. Arriving in Pennsylvania, Emma, her parents and young siblings pick apples together, but then Mama tells her she is to attend school now that she is eight. Emma is nervous because she is the only "chocolate brown" child in the class. Emma soon discovers the riches of the school library.
Tops & Bottoms
Harcourt Brace, 1995
Grades K-4
Hoping to rise above his level of poverty, clever Hare strikes a deal with a rich and lazy bear in which Bear will contribute the land while Hare will provide the labor for a profitable harvest.
That's Not Fair!/No Es Justo!: Emma Tenayuca's Struggle for Justice/La lucha de Emma Tenayuca por la justicia
Wings, 2008
Grades 2-6
Picture book biography in English and Spanish relates the struggle of Mexican American farmworkers in the early 20th Century through the perspective of Emma Tenayuca, who became a labor activist. Growing up in San Antonio in the early 20th Century, Tenayuca was shocked by the inequality around her, comparing her comfortable home with the extreme poverty of factory and farmworkers. She spoke in public about the plight of the pecan shellers in the factories and led 12,000 workers in a strike that forced factory owners to raise wages. Includes a chapter on child labor.
What is Supply and Demand? (Economics in Action)
Crabtree, 2009
Grades 4-6
Migrant
Groundwood, 2011
Grades PreK-3
Anna is the child of Mennonites from Mexico, who have come north to harvest fruit and vegetables. Sometimes she feels like a bird, flying north in the spring and south in the fall, sometimes like a jackrabbit in an abandoned burrow, since her family occupies an empty farmhouse near the field. Most of all she wonders what it would be like to be a tree rooted deeply in the earth, watching the seasons come and go.
On the Job Math Mysteries: Real-Life Math From Exciting Careers, Grades 4-8
Prufrock, 2008
Grades 4-8
70 plus pages of math problems and solutions based on real people who use math in a variety of occupations. Kids can read about how math is useful to the organic farmer, beekeeper, heavy equipment operator, software engineer, kayak guide, air traffic controller, bush pilot, and more. There are 22 occupations mentioned in all. Black and white photographs of individuals at work add to the real-life theme. Some problems include helpful diagrams and charts.
Off We Go to the Grocery Store
Woodbine, 2011
Grades K-3
A child and her mother make a list of items, go to the store, fill the cart, wait in line and head home.
Hoboes: Wandering in America, 1870-1940
Walker & Co., 1994
Young Adult
American hoboes were compulsively itinerant laborers, with roots extending back to the frontier migrants and Old World wanderers; they took part in America's industrial revolution by building railroads, lumbering, harvesting grain, etc.
Counting on Grace
Wendy Lamb, 2006
Young Adult
Inspired by a Lewis Hine photo of a child at work in a Vermont cotton mill in the early 20th Century, Winthrop imagines the story of Grace, 12, torn from her one-room schoolhouse and forced to work long hours in the textile mill as a "doffer," turning cotton into thread, alongside her mother, in the spinning room. The story explores the dangerous working conditions and the work of activists who sought to publicize the abuse.