Ox-Cart Man

Written by Donald Hull and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. (We love everything Barbara Cooney!)

This book started out as a poem, published in 1977. The original poem:

In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,
counting the seed, counting
the cellar’s portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather
tanned from deerhide,
and vinegar in a barrel
hooped by hand at the forge’s fire.

He walks by his ox’s head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,
and the bag that carried potatoes,
flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose
feathers, yarn.

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,

and at home by fire’s light in November cold
stitches new harness
for next year’s ox in the barn,
and carves the yoke, and saws planks
building the cart again.

My boys and I just eat this stuff up!

Mr Hull reworked the poem into a book, in 1979. A bit cynical, this year-cycle account of a New England farming family in the early 1800s is gentle and beautifully illustrated.  It tells of simpler living from a simpler time and that simple can be good.

I especially love reading of the goods that the ox-man packs on his cart to sell at market-  a shawl his wife made, birch brooms his son carved, linen they wove, goose feathers and so on.  This book had my boys asking lots of questions about the 'olden days' and methods of doing things. Many of their questions had us on google looking for the answers and learning together.

Ox-Cart Man won the Caldecott Medal in 1980.

Ox Cart Man Like a pastoral symphony translated into picture book format, the stunning combination of text and illustrations recreates the mood of 19-century rural New England.