A Real Farm Girl

Deborah Dowson is a Canaadian children’s librarian in North Wales,
Pennsylvania.

A visit to her grandmother’s farm proves to be full of challenge for a
young girl from the city. Mary is determined to help on the farm, and
she suffers several indignities in the attempt, such as falling in
manure, stepping in the egg bucket, and having her arm caught in the
wringer of the washing machine. She also achieves some measure of
success as she jumps safely from the high beam into the hay stack and
manages to get the runt piglet to eat. Mary also learns about the harsh
realities of farm life as she hears about her grandmother’s killing a
weasel with a pitchfork and a tomcat’s killing the baby kittens. At
the end of the visit, Mary is reluctant to leave the farm, but she vows
to return someday.

The author gives a realistic description of family farm life as it was
50 years ago, but that is not enough to create an engaging story. The
book suffers from a plot that lacks movement and climax and from a
narrator who does not dramatically change or grow from her experiences.
The predictability of Mary’s mishaps strung along one after another is
tedious, as are Mary’s encounters with some of the other characters.
The naive perspective of a preschool child is much too juvenile for the
intended Grades 4 to 5 audience. A Real Farm Girl would be best enjoyed
as a story read to younger children. Not a first-choice purchase.