Module 3: Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall/illustrated by Barbara Cooney

Hall, D. & Cooney, B. (1979). Ox-cart man. New York: Viking Press.

Summary

The journey of a hard-working man and his family, Ox-Cart Man follows a man as he takes things to the market to sell.  While at the market, he purchases new items that he takes home to his family, who use the new purchases to create new things for the market.  He sells everything, down to the ox, and the cycle begins again.

Impressions of the book- 

Similar to many children's books, Ox-Cart Man follows the cycle of an everyday occurrence, giving the reader insight into how things are related and connect to one another.  The refreshing thing about Hall's telling is that it doesn't start at the beginning of the cycle.  Instead, the reader meets the family in October as they are loading the wagon and the father is taking everything to sell at market.  The reader follows as he sells all the items his family has made throughout the year, and then as he buys new supplies and heads home.  The story could logically end here, but Hall takes it one step further, showing how the items the man has purchased are used by each family member throughout the year to make new items to take to market.  Where many stories begin with the making, Hall chose to end this way, further emphasizing the cycle and putting a simple, yet poignant twist on an otherwise familiar story.

Professional Review

Like a pastoral symphony translated into picture book format, the stunning combination of text and illustrations re-creates the mood of nineteenth-century rural New England. Economical and straightforward, the narrative achieves a poetic tone through the use of alliteration and  repetition, as in the description of the ox-cart man’s preparations for his journey to Portsmouth. “He packed a bag of wool / he sheared from the sheep in April. / He packed a shawl his wife wove on a loom/ from yarn spun at the spinning wheel / from sheep sheared in April.” As an appropriate contrast, the full-color illustrations, suggesting early American paintings on wood, depict the countryside through which he travels, the jostle of the marketplace, and the homely warmth of family life. The various phenomena of the New England landscape —  the vibrant foliage of autumn, the lurid sunsets of winter, the delicate abundance of an orchard in spring — evoke the pattern of a lifestyle geared to the rhythm of the seasonal cycle. Quiet but not static, the book celebrates the peacefulness of a time now past but one which is still, nevertheless, an irrefutable part of the American consciousness.

Horn Book (1980). [Review of the book Ox-cart man by D. Hall and B. Cooney]. Retrieved from     http://www.hbook.com/2013/10/news/awards/horn-book-reviews-caldecott-medal-winners-1980-1989/

Library Use

While it would be easy to use this book to discuss sequencing, cycles, and cause and effect, a less obvious though not completely unexpected choice would be to explore the illustrations and the illustrator who created them.  The book was, after all, the Caldecott winner in 1980.

The pictures seem to come from the same simple bygone era they represent in the story of the Ox-Cart man and his family.  However, multiple interviews from the Horn Book throughout the last few decades highlight how difficult it was for Barbara Cooney to actually create artwork for picturebooks, and the limitations that the technology of the time put on illustrators.   Her process of researching and creating her artwork is also explored.   An illustrator study of many of Cooney's works, as well as a look into the history of printmaking and picturebook making would be a great tie-in for Ox-Cart Man.  Below are the links and references to a few of the interviews and articles I stumbled upon that might assist in such a lesson.

Zuckerman, L. (2001). Letters to the Editor. Horn Book Magazine, 77(1), 3-4.

http://www.hbook.com/2012/11/authors-illustrators/making-picture-books-the-pictures/

http://www.hbook.com/2000/09/authors-illustrators/barbara-cooney/