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Anna #2
Anna on the Farm
Life on the farm is nothing like Baltimore!Anna is so excited when she finds out that she's spending a week on the farm with her aunt and uncle. She promises her mother she'll behave like a lady . . . but it's hard to do when she discovers there's a boy visiting, too. His name is Theodore, and he can't stand "stuck-up city slickers." Anna is determined to get back at him for all his teasing -- and show him a thing or two about what city slickers are really like!
The heroine of anna all year round is back for more adventures!
The heroine of anna all year round is back for more adventures!
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Mary Downing Hahn
67 books4,524 followersI grew up in a small shingled house down at the end of Guilford Road in College Park, Maryland. Our block was loaded with kids my age. We spent hours outdoors playing "Kick the Can" and "Mother, May I" as well as cowboy and outlaw games that usually ended in quarrels about who shot whom. In the summer, we went on day long expeditions into forbidden territory -- the woods on the other side of the train tracks, the creek that wound its way through College Park, and the experimental farm run by the University of Maryland.
In elementary school, I was known as the class artist. I loved to read and draw but I hated writing reports. Requirements such as outlines, perfect penmanship, and following directions killed my interest in putting words on paper. All those facts -- who cared what the principal products of Chile were? To me, writing reports was almost as boring as math.
Despite my dislike of writing, I loved to make up stories. Instead of telling them in words, I told them in pictures. My stories were usually about orphans who ran away and had the sort of exciting adventures I would have enjoyed if my mother hadn't always interfered.
When I was in junior high school, I developed an interest in more complex stories. I wanted to show how people felt, what they thought, what they said. For this, I needed words. Although I wasn't sure I was smart enough, I decided to write and illustrate children's books when I grew up. Consequently, at the age of thirteen, I began my first book. Small Town Life was about a girl named Susan, as tall and skinny and freckle faced as I was. Unlike her shy, self conscious creator, however, Susan was a leader who lived the life I wanted to live -- my ideal self, in other words. Although I never finished Small Town Life, it marked the start of a lifelong interest in writing.
In high school, I kept a diary. In college, I wrote poetry and short stories and dreamed of being published in The New Yorker. Unfortunately, I didn't have the courage or the confidence to send anything there.
By the time my first novel was published, I was 41 years old. That's how long it took me to get serious about writing. The Sara Summer took me a year to write, another year to find a publisher, and yet another year of revisions before Clarion accepted it.
Since Sara appeared in 1979, I've written an average of one book a year. If I have a plot firmly in mind when I begin, the writing goes fairly quickly. More typically, I start with a character or a situation and only a vague idea of what's going to happen. Therefore, I spend a lot of time revising and thinking things out. If I'd paid more attention to the craft of outlining back in elementary school, I might be a faster writer, but, on the other hand, if I knew everything that was going to happen in a story, I might be too bored to write it down. Writing is a journey of discovery. That's what makes it so exciting.
In elementary school, I was known as the class artist. I loved to read and draw but I hated writing reports. Requirements such as outlines, perfect penmanship, and following directions killed my interest in putting words on paper. All those facts -- who cared what the principal products of Chile were? To me, writing reports was almost as boring as math.
Despite my dislike of writing, I loved to make up stories. Instead of telling them in words, I told them in pictures. My stories were usually about orphans who ran away and had the sort of exciting adventures I would have enjoyed if my mother hadn't always interfered.
When I was in junior high school, I developed an interest in more complex stories. I wanted to show how people felt, what they thought, what they said. For this, I needed words. Although I wasn't sure I was smart enough, I decided to write and illustrate children's books when I grew up. Consequently, at the age of thirteen, I began my first book. Small Town Life was about a girl named Susan, as tall and skinny and freckle faced as I was. Unlike her shy, self conscious creator, however, Susan was a leader who lived the life I wanted to live -- my ideal self, in other words. Although I never finished Small Town Life, it marked the start of a lifelong interest in writing.
In high school, I kept a diary. In college, I wrote poetry and short stories and dreamed of being published in The New Yorker. Unfortunately, I didn't have the courage or the confidence to send anything there.
By the time my first novel was published, I was 41 years old. That's how long it took me to get serious about writing. The Sara Summer took me a year to write, another year to find a publisher, and yet another year of revisions before Clarion accepted it.
Since Sara appeared in 1979, I've written an average of one book a year. If I have a plot firmly in mind when I begin, the writing goes fairly quickly. More typically, I start with a character or a situation and only a vague idea of what's going to happen. Therefore, I spend a lot of time revising and thinking things out. If I'd paid more attention to the craft of outlining back in elementary school, I might be a faster writer, but, on the other hand, if I knew everything that was going to happen in a story, I might be too bored to write it down. Writing is a journey of discovery. That's what makes it so exciting.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 4, 2018
Now the sequel to Mary Downing Hahn's sweetly delightful Anna All Year Round (and once again loosely but truthfully based on the childhood of the author's mother Anna Sherwood in and around Baltimore during the early early years of the 20th century) most definitely is considerably less episodical and anecdotal in both scope and feel. And while some readers might actually well tend to enjoy and appreciate the more specific and one single plot driven and derived narrative of Anna on the Farm (although there are of course still ample small and engagingly informative, entertaining anecdotes and episodes of in particular early 20th century farming life into which one can sink one's reading pleasure teeth), I for one must say that while I have indeed found Anna on the Farm an enjoyable and diverting reading interlude, I certainly much much do prefer Anna All Year Round and precisely due to the fact that the plethora of oh so many depicted and described small and sometimes not even all that linked and connected episodes of Anna All Year Round have felt and continue to feel considerably more intriguing, more interesting and sustaining to me on a personal level than reading about Anna's one week on her uncle and aunt's farm (and also tend to give me a more complete general portrait of Anna Sherwood, her family and her life in early 20th century America).
For indeed, although generally speaking and for the most part Anna on the Farm is an evocative and entertainingly enjoyable novel of fun, whimsy and historical, cultural background information, for one I kind of feel as though I am only really getting to see one part of Anna Sherwood this time around, in other words I guess that I to a certain point resent that I am only reading about her week on her uncle's farm, entertaining perhaps, but I kind of do want a bit more than just information and details on Anna's rural adventures and escapades (even though the title does, I realise, specifically show this to be the case). And for two, while I do much appreciate that by the end of Anna on the Farm, Anna and Theodore have ironed out their differences and animosities and have become the best of friends, their rather constant bickering and nastiness towards one another when Anna first arrives on the farm (and that it does take almost half of the novel, that it takes almost half of Anna on the Farm for Anna and Theodore to become a bit more simpatico and less prickly) really does end up being a trifle monotonous and trying (although yes, I do applaud and cheer Anna for standing up for herself and paying Theodore back in kind, for not simply allowing him to bully her and that indeed Anna's own resilience and being both willing and able to not be cowed by Theodore does much forge and sustain the strong bonds of friendship that develop between both of them).
And while for Anna All Year Round, I had granted a full five stars, for Anna on the Farm, my ranking will have to remain at a high three stars, for a fun, entertaining, often delightful but also at times a bit personally frustrating reading experience, with especially how anally retentive and constantly nagging and verbally nasty, chastising Anna's mother acts towards in particular her daughter's tomboy ways and her physical appearance during Anna's parents' surprise visit to the farm leaving more than a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth (mostly because even though Anna's mother's behaviour and sustained constant criticisms of her daughter are obviously considered by both her husband/Anna's father and the aunt and uncle as annoyingly overbearing and somewhat overly exaggerated, no one really seems all that willing to want to tell the mother in no uncertain terms to calm down a trifle and to not act so much like a dictatorial harridan, no one seems even able to actually put down his or her foot and categorically declare that during Anna's week on the farm, she was supposed to have total and utter freedom for a few glorious days from her mother's constant dictates and mandates that her daughter, that Anna supposedly always have to act and physically look like a so-called proper young lady).
For indeed, although generally speaking and for the most part Anna on the Farm is an evocative and entertainingly enjoyable novel of fun, whimsy and historical, cultural background information, for one I kind of feel as though I am only really getting to see one part of Anna Sherwood this time around, in other words I guess that I to a certain point resent that I am only reading about her week on her uncle's farm, entertaining perhaps, but I kind of do want a bit more than just information and details on Anna's rural adventures and escapades (even though the title does, I realise, specifically show this to be the case). And for two, while I do much appreciate that by the end of Anna on the Farm, Anna and Theodore have ironed out their differences and animosities and have become the best of friends, their rather constant bickering and nastiness towards one another when Anna first arrives on the farm (and that it does take almost half of the novel, that it takes almost half of Anna on the Farm for Anna and Theodore to become a bit more simpatico and less prickly) really does end up being a trifle monotonous and trying (although yes, I do applaud and cheer Anna for standing up for herself and paying Theodore back in kind, for not simply allowing him to bully her and that indeed Anna's own resilience and being both willing and able to not be cowed by Theodore does much forge and sustain the strong bonds of friendship that develop between both of them).
And while for Anna All Year Round, I had granted a full five stars, for Anna on the Farm, my ranking will have to remain at a high three stars, for a fun, entertaining, often delightful but also at times a bit personally frustrating reading experience, with especially how anally retentive and constantly nagging and verbally nasty, chastising Anna's mother acts towards in particular her daughter's tomboy ways and her physical appearance during Anna's parents' surprise visit to the farm leaving more than a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth (mostly because even though Anna's mother's behaviour and sustained constant criticisms of her daughter are obviously considered by both her husband/Anna's father and the aunt and uncle as annoyingly overbearing and somewhat overly exaggerated, no one really seems all that willing to want to tell the mother in no uncertain terms to calm down a trifle and to not act so much like a dictatorial harridan, no one seems even able to actually put down his or her foot and categorically declare that during Anna's week on the farm, she was supposed to have total and utter freedom for a few glorious days from her mother's constant dictates and mandates that her daughter, that Anna supposedly always have to act and physically look like a so-called proper young lady).
October 29, 2013
gr 3-5 152 pgs
~1913, Baltimore/Beltsville, Maryland. 9 year old Anna is bored with being home. It's hot and it seems everyone but her is going on vacation. When her parents offer to let her visit her aunt and uncle's farm in Beltsville for a week, Anna can't wait to go! When she gets there, she discovers that she is not the only guest. A boy named Theodore is also staying there too.
Great gentle read. Provides readers with some information about daily life in the city and in the countryside at that time.
sequel to Anna All Year Round
~1913, Baltimore/Beltsville, Maryland. 9 year old Anna is bored with being home. It's hot and it seems everyone but her is going on vacation. When her parents offer to let her visit her aunt and uncle's farm in Beltsville for a week, Anna can't wait to go! When she gets there, she discovers that she is not the only guest. A boy named Theodore is also staying there too.
Great gentle read. Provides readers with some information about daily life in the city and in the countryside at that time.
sequel to Anna All Year Round
December 23, 2016
All of Anna's friends are going someplace exotic on their vacation: to the mountains or the beach. Anna is going to her Uncle's farm. She is very excited to get out of the city, but has no idea that when she gets there a mean boy named Theodore will be there, too. Someone who will do things like lock her in the chicken coop with a rowdy rooster. This could be the longest week of her life. But before she heads back to the city, she'll get her revenge!
February 23, 2023
I read it a long time ago yet I remember alot of it.
This book will forever have place in my heart.
This book will forever have place in my heart.
April 21, 2024
Great little story for 7-10 year olds!
November 30, 2008
This book was okay, a little below my reading level, but it was sweet.
Read
January 28, 2009JAR4-Hah
September 12, 2009
Anna visits the farm and has some funny adventures.
January 6, 2012
Although I enjoy juvenile fiction, this book was so-so. A story about a kid spending time at a relative's farm in the summer - they had a few adventures but the story didn't have much depth.
August 19, 2014
I liked this book, but beware that it's not one of Hahn's usual mystery/ghost stories. I was disappointed when I read it because I was expected a ghost to pop out somewhere!
September 1, 2009
A nice story for the Rappin' Readers Book Club....especially the younger kids.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews