Hurry!

From School Library Journal Kindergarten-Grade 4-There was a time, not so long ago, when family farms were the rule rather than the exception. In those days, harvesting the hay was the centerpiece of the summer. As Gramp tells Nora in this story, "Nothing's more important on this farm than hay." The excitement and tension of that time is fully realized in poetic prose as the girl and her grandparents stop everything to bring in the crop: "Hurry! Hurry! whispers the breeze. It lifts the silver poplar leaves. Rain coming! Hurryuphurryuphurryup the haytedder clacks, as Nora drives it around the field." And yet, as anxious as they are to bring in the hay, it cannot be hurried: it must be dry before it can be brought into the barn. Readers cannot help but be pulled into the story, worrying about whether the rain will hold off long enough, then breathing a sigh of relief when the wagon stacked high with sweet-smelling hay is safely in the barn, leaving only a little on the field to spoil. Smith's accomplished and engagingly realistic watercolor and colored-pencil drawings beautifully capture that time. The approaching storm clouds are especially effective, conveying visually these frantic moments. This appealing title joins a distinguished trio of books about Nora and her grandfather: Mowing (1994), No Foal Yet (1995), and Sugaring (1996, all Greenwillow).