My Life, in Children's Books

When I was a little girl, my most favoritest book was Miss Suzy, by Miriam Young*, a story about a young squirrel who was neat and tidy and bossed around toy soldiers and made them be neat and tidy, too. It was SO me!

Well, life changes and while I still like to be bossy, the whole world knows that I am no longer as neat and tidy as Miss Suzy. But this week, I discovered my new favorite book: The Old Red Tractor, by Andreas Dierssen.* I was hooked when I opened to this page:

It's quaint and messy. And there are ducks running all over the place. My life exactly! And then I kept turning pages and finding more details that could totally be borrowed from our little patch of life.

Like the creatively engineered repair jobs:

The random junk piles in the shed:

And a rogue chicken trying to make his home among the junk piles instead of the nesting boxes (actually, we gather almost half of our eggs out of the shed and NOT the nesting boxes):

That chicken's feathered friends, dropping feathers (and poop) all over the yard:

And the Mama collecting bushels of apples. While simultaneously telling the boy no because he wanted  something that they "don't have enough money for." 

Plot synopsis: Tony has a great old, red tractor. He loves it. Life is good. Until he sees his friend's shiny, new tractor. Now all of the sudden life isn't so rosy on his quaint, but messy little farm.

 He begs for a shiny, new tractor, gets rejected, and eventually realizes that he likes his old, faithful tractor just fine. And then rides down the idyllic countryside hill, realizing that "no matter how old, beat-up, or broken his tractor was, Old Red was the best tractor in the world."

That'll preach...

* Not Amazon Affilliate links - I only wish my blog were cool enough to get those!