North American People, Christianity, Middle Atlantic States

An Amish Year

Name: An Amish Year
Author: Richard Ammon, Pamela Patrick
ISBN: 9780689826221

by Richard Ammon, Pamela Patrick

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Overview

Spend a year with Anna and her family and learn what it is like to be Amish, from day to day and season to season.

In the springtime, Anna looks forward to Easter festivities, planting the garden, and spring cleaning. Sumer begins with the school picnic. On a clear summer day, Anna's family makes hay and afterwards enjoys a picnic with ice cream. In fall, Anna begins fourth grade in the one room schoolhouse, and at home she helps her mother can fruit for the winter. November is wedding season for the Amish, and Thanksgiving and Christmas follow soon after. Winter is a time for feasting and family gatherings, playing board games, and reading by the warmth of the stove.

Anna's life is full of hard work as well as play, just like the lives of other children her age. As they follow Anna as she does her chores, flies her kite, attends services, and celebrates her birthday, children will appreciate the similarities and differences between Anna's life and their own.

An Amish girl describes a year in her life and the activities that fill it, from early spring through the following winter.

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Editorials

Children's Literature - Children's Literature

In this companion book to An Amish Christmas and An Amish Wedding, Richard Ammon continues to present the daily life of the Amish. Written in first person, the young Amish girl, Anna, tells about the important events that occur in the various seasons of the year. However, because the information presented is limited by picture book format, there is no flow of either text or illustrations. The book reads as snippets of disjointed text with illustrations that are not placed to match the text. The strong points of the book are Patrick's representative pastel illustrations that are intricately inviting and introduce children to the lifestyle of the Amish. In the author's note, Ammon mentions and briefly explains some of the customs of the Amish, and because of this, the book has merit for those libraries that need materials to enrich the study of the Amish way of life. The publishers list the age range of readers as 5 to 7, but because there is considerable text on one page of the two-page spreads, this reviewer questions whether children this age would be able to focus long enough for the book to be read to them. Few could read it alone. 2000, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Ages 5 to 7, $16.95. Reviewer: Jenny B. (J. B.) Petty—Children's Literature