Sleep Tight Farm: A Farm Prepares for Winter is an interesting and multi-faceted picture book (2016). Writer Eugenie Doyle and her family operate Last Resort Farm in Vermont, and that expertise comes through clearly. This book about a family getting a farm ready for winter is educational: it walks readers through all the things the family does to get the farm ready for winter. They prep the fields, putting straw over berry plants and pruning raspberry bushes. They prep the farm buildings, buttoning up the hoophouse and making sure the hen house is ready for frost and snow. They prep the farm stand and beehives, and, finally, they prep the farmhouse and the farm family.
Each action is explained, and each is illustrated. However, each is also celebrated. This book falls somewhere between a winter ritual, akin to a going to bed ritual for kids, and a love letter to farm life.
Becca Stadtlander’s illustrations show a modern farm, with all that this includes: electric lights, huge machines like cultivators and tillers, and so on. However, the style is quietly old-fashioned, evoking farm and landscape paintings from earlier in American history.
This book is quiet, but pleasing and educational.
