Discount Price: $24.95
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Hardcover
EAN num: 9780879239107
ISBN number: 0879239107
Label: David R Godine
Manufacturer: David R Godine
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 80
Printing Date: January 01, 1991
Publishing house: David R Godine
Age index: Ages 9-12
Sale Popularity Level: 2604611
Studio: David R Godine
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Thrashin' Time takes us back to autumn days in North Dakota in 1912, when farmers worked the land with sturdy draft horses and a new-fangled machine called the steam traction engine. The story opens with young Peter's very first look at the engine - blue boiler and blue wheels, puffing smoke and hissing steam, gears spinning and rods stroking back and forth - and old Mr. Torgrimson's wise prediction: 'You know, Peter, you're witnessing the beginning of real scientific farming.'
This is Peter's own story of how he and his little sister Anna learned to farm, and how it all changes the day Mr. Parker's steam-threshing rig rumbles onto their place. All the neighbors come to help, and so does Aunt Mavis with her recipe for buffalo-berry pie and her stories about the children's pioneer Norwegian grandparents. Threshing begins when the engine's whistle awakens the threshers, bundle pitchers, and wagon teams, and calls them to work in the darkness long before dawn. While the men thresh the grain, the women and girls prepare five meals a day for a horde of hungry threshermen. The end of the workday comes only when darkness falls again. For Peter and Anna summer brings long days of hard work, reunion with family and friends, and some sadness too.
Beyond this tale of Peter and his family is the story of steam power on the American farm. It was the steam traction engine - the very first farm 'tractor' - that plowed America's vast prairie grasslands and threshed the fields of wheat stretching to the horizons. Thrashin' Time is about growing up on a farm in the midst of fundamental change, but even more it is a tribute in words and pictures to America's farm families and a long-gone way of life.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Thrashin' Time is an undeservedly unremarked slice of Americana posing as a children's book. Chronicling the advent of steam thrashers in North Dakota circa 1886 from the perspective of a 12-year-old boy, this story will delight all model railroaders and live steam operators with its scrupulously researched description of steam tractor ops, along with the pen-and-ink illustrations that range from superb to dazzling. It is a deft exercise in regional writing. It is a food book: the descriptions of the collective meals prepared for the wheat harvesters are worthy of Faulkner. In the end, it is a vivid illustration of American life before automobiles, suburbia, and television, when a day in school was a restful privilege compared to the real demands in the life of the young. Do not get this book figuring to read it aloud to young ears. It's pitched at least at the middle school level.
Rated by buyers -
My 8-year-old son is a machine maniac, and he loved his story of a boy in 1912 helping to harvest wheat in North Dakota by learning to run a steam engine. Lots of info and great drawings of the steam tractor and thresher, plus fanscinating details about life on the prairie. Mom enjoyed it too, and often had a tear in her eye.
Find other books like this one:
