Agricultural Economics
Alvarez, Julia, Return to Sender, Yearling, 2010. (Grades 6-9)
After 11-year-old Tyler's father is injured in a tractor accident, the family is in danger of losing their dairy farm. Desperate for help, Tyler's family employs a family of undocumented Mexican laborers, the Cruz family, to move into a trailer on the farm and run the farm. The extended families grow close over the course of one year with holiday celebrations and shared gatherings.
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Andrews, Carolyn, What is Trade? (Economics in Action), Crabtree, 2008. (Grades 4-6)
Carefully explains how countries around the world engage in trade.
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Atkin, S. Beth, Voices from the Fields: Children of Migrant Farmworkers Tell Their Stories, Little Brown, 2000. (Grades 4-6)
A compendium of interviews, poems and photographs spotlighting nine migrant Mexican-American children in California's Salinas Valley.
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Bernier-Grand, and David Diaz, Cesar: Si,
Se Puede! Yes, We Can!,
Marshall Cavendish, 2005. (Grades 6-8)
Poetry and illustrations highlight Cesar Chavez' struggle to
empower migrant workers using peaceful protest.
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Collard, Sneed B., Cesar Chavez: The Farm Workers' Best Friend (American Heroes), Benchmark, 2009. (Grades 4-6) |
DeFelice, Cynthia, Under the Same Sky, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. (Grades 5-9)
Joe Pedersen, 14, begrudgingly joins the migrant workers on his father's upstate New York farm to earn the $1,000 he needs to buy a Thunderbird motorbike. Determined to show his father he can keep pace with Manuel, the 16-year-old crew boss, Joe painfully adjusts to the grueling routine of planting, hoeing and weeding cabbages and picking strawberries. Previously insensitive to the plight of the migrants, Joe begins to grasp the hardships, uncertainty, loyalty and courage of these laborers who are often ridiculed and threatened by his peers and other whites in the community.
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Demi, One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical
Folk Tale, Scholastic, 1996. (K-2)
The story of Rani, a clever
girl who outsmarts a very selfish raja and saves her village.
When offered a reward for a good deed, she asks only for one grain
of rice, doubled each day for 30 days. Remember your math? That's
lots of rice: enough to feed a village for a good long time--and
to teach a greedy raja a lesson.
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Ehlert, Lois, Market Day: A Story Told With Folk Art,
Voyager, 2002. (PreK-2)
The illustrations are from folk art around the world, with bright
visions of chickens, veggies, farms and the road to the market.
The varied countries of origin for the folk art are
listed.
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Friedrich, Elizabeth, and Michael
Garland, Leah's Pony, Boyds Mills, 1996. (Grades preK-3)
Amid the Dust Bowl of the
1930s, Leah's father is faced with the loss of the family farm
and puts his farm and equipment up for auction, but Leah comes
up with the money by selling her beloved pony.
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| Haerens, Margaret (editor), The World Trade Organization (Opposing Viewpoints), Greenhaven, 2010. (Young Adult) |
Hall, Donald, The Milkman's Boy,
Walker, Walker, 1997. (Grades PreK-2)
Paul Graves is coming of
age during a time when horses and carriages shared roads with
Model Ts, and new technology changed old ways of doing things.
His father calls the new invention of pasteurization nothing but
a fad . . . until one day a fever strikes Paul's sister, and his
family learns a hard lesson about the need to balance change and
tradition.
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Haugen, Brenda, Unusual Farms, Compass Point, 2004. (Grades
1-3)
Provides high quality photos and brief explanations
for ostrich, bison, llama, fish, silk, tree and bamboo farms.
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Hopkinson, Deborah, and Rachel Isadora, Saving Strawberry Farm, Greenwillow, 2005. (Grades PreK-3)
Like everyone else in the small midwestern town, Davy's family is struggling to survive the mean, hot summer of 1933. Davy is delighted when his neighbor, Miss Elsie, tips him a penny for carrying her groceries, until he learns she is about to lose her strawberry farm at a bank auction. When another neighbor proposes that the town stage a "penny auction," Davy spreads the word, and, later, it's his penny that starts the bidding low enough to enable Miss Elsie to buy her own farm. Most powerful are the close-up scenes of a community surviving the Depression with creativity and spirit.
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Krull,
Kathleen, and Yuyu Morales, Harvesting Hope: The Story of
Cesar Chavez, Harcourt, 2003.
The story
of Cesar Chavez's 340-mile march to protest the working conditions
of migrant farmworkers in California. Readers meet Chavez at his
grandparents' home in Arizona where he lived happily amid a large
extended family. His childhood was cut short when, due to financial
difficulties, the family was forced to move to California to seek
employment. After years of laboring in the fields, Chavez became
increasingly disturbed by the inhuman living conditions imposed
by the growers. The text is largely limited to one side of a spread;
beautifully rendered earth-toned illustrations flow out from behind
the words and onto the facing page.
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McClure, Nikki, To Market, To Market, Abrams, 2011. (Grades PreK-3)
With her distinctive cut-paper artistry, McClure follows a young boy and his mother on market day when they shop for apples, kale, honey, smoked salmon and other green-market items and traces each to its source. Kids will love learning how milk is curdled and honey collected from hives.
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| Miller, Debra A., Fair Trade (Current Controversies), Greenhaven, 2010. (Young Adult) |
| Minden, Cecilia, Grocery Shopping by the Numbers, Cherry Lake, 2007. (Grades 3-6) |
Parks, Carmen, Farmers Market, Sandpiper, 2003. (Grades 4-8)
The story, set in the American Southwest, is of
a family trip to the farmer's market
through the eyes of small girl.
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Paterson, Katherine, Bread and Roses, Too, Sandpiper, 2008. (Grades 4-6)
Paterson has drawn upon the facts of the famous 1912 Bread and Roses strike in he mills of Lawrence, MA, and the sympathetic response of the citizens of Barre, VT, to tell the story of two children enmeshed in complex events.
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Rendon, Marcie R., and Cheryl Walsh
Bellville, Farmer's Market: Families Working Together,
Carolrhoda, 2001. (Grades 3-6)
An introduction to farmers'
markets, with photos, as seen through the eyes of two successful
truck-farming families. A brief overview of a Minnesota farmer's
market leads to introductions of two local families: the Thaos,
of Hmong descent, and the Kornders, of Polish-German ancestry.
Emphasizing the family cooperation required to keep a farm going,
and with a special focus on the children's participation, the
book also concentrates on moments in the growing season, from
the planting of greenhouse seedlings to fall harvests, noting
farming techniques and equipment. Nice attention is also given
to the international variety of foods and specialties available
at market. Readers, particularly urban kids, will learn much from
this attractive photo-essay that shows what's so special about
farmers' markets: you meet the people who grow the food.
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Ryan, Pam Munoz, Esperanza Rising, Scholastic, 2002. (Grades
4-6)
Esperanza's mother escapes her stepbrothers, who are holding her
as a social and economic hostage, by moving with Esperanza to the
US to work in California's agricultural industry. Set against the
multiethnic, labor-organizing era of the Depression, this book should
make good classroom discussion.
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Silverman, Buffy, Follow That Food: Distribution of Resources (Raintree Fusion: Social Studies), Heinemann-Raintree, 2007. (Grades 4-6)
How food gets from farm to table.
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Smothers, Ethel Footman, The Hard-Times Jar, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. (Grades PreK-2)
Emma and her family are migrant workers who follow the crops to make a living. Passionate about books, the girl longs for a store-bought volume but knows that the few coins her mother saves in a jar are for no-money days. Arriving in Pennsylvania, Emma, her parents and young siblings pick apples together, but then Mama tells her she is to attend school now that she is eight. Emma is nervous because she is the only "chocolate brown" child in the class. Emma soon discovers the riches of the school library.
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Stevens, Janet, Tops & Bottoms,
Harcourt Brace, 1995. (K-4)
Hoping to rise above his
level of poverty, clever Hare strikes a deal with a rich and lazy
bear in which Bear will contribute the land while Hare will provide
the labor for a profitable harvest.
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Tafolla, Carmen, and Sharyll Tenayuca and Terry Ybanez, That's Not Fair!/No Es Justo!: Emma Tenayuca's Struggle for Justice/La lucha de Emma Tenayuca por la justicia, Wings, 2008. (Grades 2-6)
Picture book biography in English and Spanish relates the struggle of Mexican American farmworkers in the early 20th Century through the perspective of Emma Tenayuca, who became a labor activist. Growing up in San Antonio in the early 20th Century, Tenayuca was shocked by the inequality around her, comparing her comfortable home with the extreme poverty of factory and farmworkers. She spoke in public about the plight of the pecan shellers in the factories and led 12,000 workers in a strike that forced factory owners to raise wages. Includes a chapter on child labor.
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Thompson, Gare, What is Supply and Demand? (Economics in Action), Crabtree, 2009. (Grades 4-6) |
Trotter, Maxine, and Isabelle Arsenault, Migrant, Groundwood, 2011. (Grades PreK-3)
Anna is the child of Mennonites from Mexico, who have come north to harvest fruit and vegetables. Sometimes she feels like a bird, flying north in the spring and south in the fall, sometimes like a jackrabbit in an abandoned burrow, since her family occupies an empty farmhouse near the field. Most of all she wonders what it would be like to be a tree rooted deeply in the earth, watching the seasons come and go.
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Webster, Avril, Off We Go to the Grocery Store, Woodbine, 2011. (Grades K-3)
A child and her mother make a list of items, go to the store, fill the cart, wait in line and head home.
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Wormser, Richard, Hoboes: Wandering in America, 1870-1940, Walker & Co., 1994. (Young Adult)
American hoboes were compulsively itinerant laborers, with roots extending back to the frontier migrants and Old World wanderers; they took part in America's industrial revolution by building railroads, lumbering, harvesting grain, etc.
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Winthrop, Elizabeth, Counting on Grace, Wendy Lamb, 2006. (Young Adult)
Inspired by a Lewis Hine photo of a child at work in a Vermont cotton mill in the early 20th Century, Winthrop imagines the story of Grace, 12, torn from her one-room schoolhouse and forced to work long hours in the textile mill as a "doffer," turning cotton into thread, alongside her mother, in the spinning room. The story explores the dangerous working conditions and the work of activists who sought to publicize the abuse.
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