It’s Corn Picking Time!

The sun is up, and it’s time for a farmer, portrayed with brown skin, to harvest her fields of corn. Along with her team, her trusted partner is a combine, “enormous and red./ Grumbling and growling,/ it creeps from the shed,” writes Esbaum (Bird Girl). After “chains grab and gobble the autumn-dry stalks,” the machine spits out the chaff and deposits “golden, glorious heaps” of corn (depicted in a luscious close-up that resembles a cross between honeycomb and a treasure chest’s contents) into an adjacent grain truck. They’re then dried in a machine that emits “billows of steamy, roast-corn-scented cloud” before the day draws to a close and everyone gathers for a big meal. Crisp, textural images by Crowton (In Our Garden) bring a hand-painted, toylike feel to scenes that steadily depict hard work. There’s something here for every reader: savory language in smartly scanning rhymes, detailed scenes of farm life, and a step-by-step tribute to the machines and processes that make the harvest possible. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. A note about life on a corn farm concludes. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Tricia Lawrence, Erin Murphy Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Productions. (July)