Thrashin' Time: Harvest Days in the Dakotas - Hardcover

Weitzman, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879239107 ISBN 13: 9780879239107

Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher, 1991

Synopsis

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 first look at the engine - blue boiler and red 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 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.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Peter (12) has heard a lot about steam engines, and he even saw one thrashing wheat at a neighbor's last year, but now the big steam tractor is coming to his farm. He and his six-year-old sister, Anna, get to stay home from school, but have to work hard--Anna makes 200 rolls a day for the hungry thrashers, while Peter drives the water wagon to keep the big engine supplied. Best, he gets to help Mr. Parker, the engineer, keep the engine running--and Mr. Parker even gives Peter his old engineering books as a parting gift. This window on the past depicts farm life in North Dakota just after the turn of the century, at the dawn of modern farm mechanization, with painstaking verisimilitude. The meticulous pen drawings of the tractor, separator, and thrashers are large, handsome, and full of engrossing detail. As narrated by Peter, the story is chiefly a vehicle for conveying a sense of time and place--food, people, tasks; still, here, too, the authentic detail holds interest. Some historical notes would have helped-- 15 storytellers are credited, but who were they? How much of the story is fact? And, though a carefully labeled drawing of the tractor is included, there are few technical details. All in all, however, an attractive book that does what it sets out to do. (Nonfiction. 11+) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Grade 4 Up-- Tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka-tucka--ss--ss--ss--ss--The sounds of a steam-driven thrashing machine have passed into history, and nearly from the memory of most adults. So how are children to learn about this romanticized fragment of American past? Thrashin' Time should fill that information gap, and provide much visual enjoyment. This is a startlingly beautiful book, painstakingly typeset, with white space ample enough to suggest effortless reading. The prose is colorful, but as good as the writing is, the real power of the book is in Weitzman's fine line drawings, many on a double-page spread, each one frameable. He includes not only drawings of the steam engine at work, detailed labeled models, but also extraordinary illustrations of people involved in various aspects of thrashing: the crew at rest, the man driving the horse-drawn mower, the women preparing the much-lauded noon meal. This may not be a book that children will pick up automatically, but, once introduced, it will be appreciated by a wide audience. --Lee Bock, Brown County Public Libraries, Green Bay, WI
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0879239107
• ISBN 13: 9780879239107
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80