Life on the Farm

In the first book that Heather wrote about her main character Patti, we meet her and her family. It is never absolutely clear what roots the family has but they have a Scottish name and both parents work off the farm. Dad at the local sawmill, and mom at the village bank branch. The farm is not much by modern standards: hay, cows, chickens, and is mortgaged. Not an unusual story at all. And Patti herself seems a pretty average ten year old kid with an older brother.

The thing is though, Patti may have no magical powers, but she has plenty of guts and determination and following her around in this first book is exhausting, exciting and sooo educational. Educational in the sense that Patti sets out to learn stuff about life and she belongs to a family that hasn't all the answers but will struggle along with her through this important year of her life. We tag along, participate and get a warm feeling deep down inside.

While this story is aimed at children by the publishers, and is about childhood, it is very accessible to all ages just as the 'Anne of Green Gables' books are.

Christmas is coming. Think about adding this and its two companions, 'Little Guy' and 'Joan's Summer' to your family bookshelves. In fact, don't leave home without them!

Patti hits the silver screen?

Heather and I have begun to think about the Patti books in terms of their visual qualities. They are presented in print, but are absorbed visually – the words and situations, the actions that are described, are very visual. Perhaps this is because Heather writes about many situations that actually happened in some form or other in her own childhood and she sees them played out like a film in her minds eye.

Because her time on the farm was in the 1950s, what she visualizes is a rural past which itself is still leaving the time of workhorses and harvest co-operation. They are within the family memory and scraps of that past are still part of the community’s social fabric and physically clutter up outbuildings, even while the family struggles with the more modern reality of both parents working off the farm to keep heart and hearth together. Wagons and horses, training to harness, log building and sugaring off, all were part of a vanishing knowledge base which still had present day interest, as if knowing how to do all these old things was still valuable and could possibly be needed again. The children in this family must be prepared for a modern future but were encouraged to learn tried and true skills as well. They were character building and in the process they were so much fun and gave such satisfaction. And all this is laid out chapter by chapter through all three books: Life on the Farm, Little Guy, and Joan's Summer.

These chapters are like segments in a film series. They present a puzzle to be solved, a situation to be understood, a skill to be learned, a learning to be achieved and built upon as the children grow up. Some situations, as in Heather’s own childhood, are not sweet or pretty but are part of real life. They have the ring of truth which in the end is more useful to us all than light entertainment. In their own way these books are thoughtful teaching stories to be discussed, absorbed, adapted and applied to our own present day situations.

So maybe someday we will all enjoy and learn from them with our children in film versions just as we did the 'Anne of Green Gables' a few years ago. (Interestingly 'Anne of Green Gables', the books and the television series, are enjoyed by all ages, and the Patti stories, while they are published as children's books, are also of interest to everyone - we have all had a childhood, and have all been profoundly influenced by that experience).

Who could play Patti? Who could do justice to Joan? What location would work? What vintage of pick-up truck would dad have driven? And where do we find a little Guy? This all sounds like a barrel of fun!

The Author's visit.

Heather met a class of elementary children yesterday and presented her Patti books. She talked first about the different kinds of writing, fiction and non-fiction, and discussed this with the students. Then she pointed out that in the Patti books, which were definitely fiction, the characters and events were often patterned after actual characters and situations that she had met in her life's travels. So things were more complicated than the simple test of 'did this happen?' might appear. She gave the example of a snowy scene in her fictional story, and her sister who shared her life said that she did not remember that extreme a snowfall on the farm in Ontario. “ It is fiction”, she had replied, “I needed that much snow for the story”.

When we tell a true story we select, emphasis, adjust,and then present the facts as we remember them. In a fictional story we can go even further. In the end though we have a story to tell and in the Patti books selected events are changed and elaborated to express an idea more convincingly. Heather’s childhood friend Joan, for example, was someone she knew on the farm and she captured the essence of that personality and her life situation, but from there on the Joan of the books was a development into fiction. A fiction however that revealed the character 'Joan' more fully and thoughtfully than the original fragment of 'reality' could have done.

Heather handled this 3/4 split class very carefully: handling an important subject with a light touch and in a way that would help them with their own writing and then she moved on to a reading from 'Life on the Farm' where Patti meets the quarter horse 'Little Guy' and we begin the transition to the next book in the series.