This post is part of our “Summer of Great Family Reads” series. Don’t miss the initial post full of more excellent recommendations!
McBroom’s Wonderful One-Acre Farm: Three Tall Tales by Sid Fleischman. Beech Tree Chapter Books, reprint 1997. 64 pages.
Here Comes McBroom! by Sid Fleischman. Greenwillow, reprint 1998. 80 pages.
Reading Level: Chapter books, Ages 4-8
Recommended For: Ages 4-8, Ages 8-10
Bottom line: McBroom and his family live on a wonderful one-acre farm that can grow anything to whopper size, especially these delightful tall tales.
When Josh and Melissa McBroom head west with their eleven children (whose names are SO fun to rattle off!), they are apparently swindled into buying a single acre of seemingly worthless land. But to everyone’s surprise and the dismay of their conniving neighbor Heck Jones, that one acre turns out to be a wonderful powerhouse for growing anything in record time. Most crops can be grown and harvested several times a day—but be careful not to drop anything by accident!
Whether having trouble with Heck Jones, collecting peculiar animals, avoiding oversized pesky insects, sprinting on an overgrown rooster, racing a giant beanstalk to the fair, surviving excessively cold winters, or solving a ghost mystery (hint: there is nothing supernatural going on), these exuberant adventures weave numerous threads together into peculiar stories that are plain fun to read. As with other tall tales, the reader is left to speculate how much of the truth is exaggerated and to what extent the narrator is reliable.
These modern American tall-tales written by Newbery award-winning Sid Fleischman are delightfully humorous family reads. The father is clever, the mother is patient, and the children love to help. Whether or not you are starting a small hobby homestead with a large family, you will enjoy these books. Some are combined in McBroom’s Wonderful One-Acre Farm and Here Comes McBroom! A few single out of print titles may be available at your library.
Cautions: Supernatural (disproven)
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5
Worldview Rating: 4 out of 5
Artistic Rating: 4 out of 5
Categories: 4 stars and up, fairy and folk tales, chapter books, retro reads, read alouds, humor
Cover image from Amazon.
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