Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 A favorite with my three year old son July 22, 2008
I loved this book the first time I read it to my three year old son. It is a quality story and the language is wonderful.
It is one we purchased in hardcover because I wanted it to be more durable since we read it several times per week.
I love Oxcart Man! December 7, 2007
This is a wonderful book about earlier and simpler days when a family wasted nothing and supported themselves off the land. Each member of the family contributes and their activities change as the seasons do. It's wonderful!
Ox-Cart Man January 19, 2007
This is one of my family's all-time favorite children's books, with lovely, quiet pictures and a calm tone in the text. We love the feeling of the "circle of seasons" that it gives, as well as a glimpse back into a simpler era. The story also portrays the ethic of working hard and being rewarded for it. I read it to all five of our children as they were growing up. This Christmas I bought it for our 23 year-old daughter, who had asked for it. She doesn't have children yet; she just loves the book and wanted it for her own library. I was pleased to see Donald Hall's poem, "Ox-Cart Man"-- almost identical to the words in the children's book-- in Garrison Keillor's book called Good Poems, an anthology of poems he selected and arranged.
 Entertaining in a peaceful way January 7, 2007
Gave this account of a year in the life of a farm family to my 2-1/2 year old grandson. Worked, because the first time he asked his father to "read it again." Appealed to me, since it shows a natural cycle of growing/making things, selling them, and starting over. We may not operate quite this way, but it may still provide understanding of the world to a youngster. Appealing pictures, peaceful telling - perhaps the most "exciting" event is the farmer kissing his ox good-bye at market. Maybe a good bedtime story.
Cycle of Nature November 24, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This picture book superbly illustrated by Barbara Cooney is 37 pages, of which 22 are illustrations with or without text. The text is provided by Donald Hall and teaches the law of the harvest by showing how a New Englander filled a cart with surplus harvest and handmade items to sell at Portsmouth market, which was a ten-day journey. The reader learns that in March the maples were tapped for their syrup and that in April the sheep were sheared. Their fields and gardens yielded potatoes, turnips, and cabbages, while their orchard gave apples. All these things were put into the ox-cart and taken to market. At market, everything was sold including the cart and the ox.
Then the New Englander went shopping for manufactured goods, some imported from England, as well as for sweets. Carrying everything in a newly-purchased kettle tied to a pole slung over his shoulder, he trekked back to his farm. The family received their practical gifts and went right to work with their new tools by sewing, whittling, cooking, stitching, carving, sawing, splitting, weaving, embroidering, tapping, shearing, and knitting all of winter. When Spring arrived, they planted their fields. By caring for their tools and fields with diligence, the result will no doubt be another bountiful harvest.
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