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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Summary
Summary
Winner of the Caldecott Medal
Thus begins a lyrical journey through the days and weeks, the months, and the changing seasons in the life of one New Englander and his family. The oxcart man packs his goods - the wool from his sheep, the shawl his wife made, the mittens his daughter knitted, and the linen they wove. He packs the birch brooms his son carved, and even a bag of goose feathers from the barnyard geese.
He travels over hills, through valleys, by streams, past farms and villages. At Portsmouth Market he sells his goods, one by one - even his beloved ox. Then, with his pockets full of coins, he wanders through the market, buying provisions for his family, and returns to his home. And the cycle begins again.
"Like a pastoral symphony translated into picture book format, the stunning combination of text and illustrations recreates the mood of 19-century rural New England."-- The Horn Book
Author Notes
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. was born in New Haven, Connecticut on September 20, 1928. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1951. His first collection of poetry, Exiles and Marriages, was published in 1955. His other collections included Without, The Museum of Clear Ideas, and The Painted Bed. He received several awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award for The One Day, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for The Happy Man, the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Silver medal, and the Ruth Lilly Prize for poetry. He served as poetry editor of The Paris Review from 1953 to 1962 and was the United States poet laureate for 2006-2007.
He was also a memoirist, an essayist, and the author of textbooks and children's books. His memoirs were entitled Life Work and Unpacking the Boxes. His children's book, Ox-Cart Man illustrated by Barbara Cooney, won the Caldecott Medal. He received a National Medal of Arts in 2011. He died on June 23, 2018 at the age of 89.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
Plain but pleasingly cadenced, concrete as the list of commodities that makes up much of the text, yet radiating a sense of life's cyclic rhythms, this tells of an early New England farmer going off to Portsmouth market. He sells products the family has raised and grown, sells products they have made from what they raised and grew, then sells the containers (apple barrel, potato bag) the goods were in, and finally sells his ox cart, harness, and ox, before buying some humble household tools and walking home (with ""coins still in his pocket"") to start again. . . ""stitching a new harness for the young ox in the barn."" Without Cooney's illustrations--comely and decorous scenes in the manner of early American folk painting--this might seem almost too plain. But she makes a satisfying, full (and eye-filling) experience of the everyday round, as she follows the farmer and his family through the peaceful countryside and the changing seasons--reflecting their unselfconscious accord with nature in her own seamless accord with the text. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 5-9. The cycle of the seasons comes vividly alive as pictures and text follow a New England farm family in the mid-1800s as they till the soil, harvest their crops, and sell their goods at market.
