Eva of the Farm

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In this beautiful, tightly woven novel in verse, which follows the progression of the seasons, she may have to leave her idyllic home, just like her namesake. Their rift grows wider when a blight starts the ripples of foreclosure. Eva begins to blame their mounting misfortunes on a blackened tree in the canyon known as the Demon Snag and the evil it must be emitting.

Fans of Karen Hesse will welcome this partner in poetry. Collagelike illustrations introduce each section. This text offers much to prompt discussion and poetry writing. Twelve-year-old Eva Evangeline loves her life on the family orchard in Washington State, loves her baby brother Achilles, and loves to write poetry. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. By clicking 'Sign me up' I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the privacy policy and terms of use. Free eBook offer available to NEW subscribers only. Must redeem within 90 days.

See full terms and conditions and this month's choices. Tell us what you like, so we can send you books you'll love. Sign up and get a free eBook! Eva of the Farm By Dia Calhoun. Illustrated by Kate Slater. Price may vary by retailer. Add to Cart Add to Cart.

Eva of the Farm On top of the hill, I lean against the deer fence and write a poem in the sky. My fingertip traces each word on the sunlit blue— the sky will hold the words for me until I get the chance to write them down. After the last line, I sign my name— Eva of the Farm. My real name is Evangeline after the heroine in an old poem— Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie.

Dodging the sagebrush on the hill, I walk on beside the wire deer fence that protects our farm. My job is to check for holes the deer may have dug beneath the wire. It takes an hour and a half to walk all the way around the deer fence— our land covers nearly a hundred acres. Our farm is named Acadia Orchard after the land in the old poem. I want to be a poet with a shining imagination, but whoever heard of a heroine-poet?

Waking Up at the Farm in Summer I wake under a skylight that shouts blue against my glad eyes. Another sunny summer day! I grin at our black Lab, Sirius, with a Frisbee in his mouth— waiting for the first toss of the morning. I run outside with the gray squirrels, the deer, rabbits, and whip-poor-wills— high-fiving the newborn world.

As I walk down the hill, checking the last section of the deer fence, dust dances around my feet. It is hot and dry up here. I can see my house below, rising like a wooden ship in a sea of green lawn. I can see the orchard, ruffled with leaves. I can see the white slash of the hammock. I can also see that the west gate leading to the wild canyon stands wide open. Close the gates to keep the deer out of the orchard. Five gates stand guard in the deer fence.

The east gate— where we drive in from the highway. The west gate— where we hike up to the wild canyon. The south gate— where I go to play with Mr. And the fairy gate— only three feet high, it leads to the old cherry tree on the farm where my best friend Chloe used to live. It means figments of your imagination. Because if something really wants to get into the orchard, it will find a way through the gates, through the deer fence. Sometimes, I want to fling all the gates wide open to see what might come in. After closing the west gate, I slide into the hammock, swing and swing, and remember the poem I wrote yesterday.

Hammock Queen In the hammock I am a queen in a swinging throne of string borne by two tall knights— the maple trees. I toss dried corn to my grateful subjects— gray squirrels who peer and chatter at me, paying homage. On my right stands the boundary of my kingdom— the tall deer fence. Beyond it the wild world of the canyon threatens— beckons— riddled with dragons, promises of shining treasure, and perilous quests.

But here, on my side of the fence, is the Farm— with rows of apple trees lined up like soldiers. Here, in a throne of string, beside the wild world, I sway, stricken to the heart with earth and sky, knowing, I belong to this, my apple kingdom.

See a Problem?

A wet nose nudges my arm just as my eyes flutter closed in the hammock. I rub his ears, silky as the yarn Grandma Helen spun on her spinning wheel. His tail thumps on the grass. I jump out of the hammock.

Eva of the Farm

Mom and Dad will be waiting for my report on the deer fence. With Sirius following, I cross the yard, passing the vegetable garden, passing the blue spruce trees, their branches fluttering with quail. I walk toward the big new shed that we built last spring for the farm equipment, shop, and office upstairs. Sirius trots behind me through the door to the shop where Dad kneels beside our new tractor, changing the oil. I remember picking out the shiny orange tractor with Mom last spring, remember being astonished by the prices on the dangling tags. Chloe Quetzal, my best friend, had to move far away over the lonely mountains to Seattle.

To make extra money, Dad guides white-water rafters on the Methow River in the summer and teaches skiing during the winter.

Mom writes fishing, hunting, and gardening articles for magazines. She hunts in fall and winter. So we eat venison and duck, duck, duck, and more duck, and quail and grouse, too. My brother, Achilles— named, what a surprise, after the Greek hero Achilles— chews on a plastic ring in his playpen in the shop. When I pick him up, he raises his chubby arms, grabs my nose, and grins his lopsided grin.

A nine-month-old baby, he mostly howls and poops. I leave the shed, go into the house, and climb the ladder to my loft bedroom— a fancy way of saying attic. With the skylight flung open, I look at the sky— it still holds the poem I wrote up on the hill by the deer fence. To retrieve the words, I stand still, so still, watching, waiting, until— I am blueness, I am cloud, I am wind— I am the sky. Then the words of my poem come flying back to me. They are warm, as though sprinkled with all the spices of the sky. When the poem is all inside my head again, I write it down in my best calligraphy.

I write all my poems in calligraphy in black ink on white Canson calligraphy paper. Grandma Helen taught me to shape the graceful letters and hold the pen lightly at a constant angle in spite of my being left-handed. I love the whisper of the pen on the paper. It makes me remember Grandma Helen. The Haunted Outhouse Grandma Helen built an outhouse with a view of the sagebrush hills. Last year, Grandma Helen died. Now the outhouse door creaks in the lonely wind. The metal roof rusts in the weeds on the ground. Early the next morning, I walk up the canyon with Dad.

The canyon winds like a green snake between the dry sagebrush hills behind the Farm. The canyon is beautiful. Aspens—black-and-white Dalmatian trees— and ponderosa pines sway in groves with the on-again-off-again creek chanting through like a prayer. Quail skitter in the brush and deer graze. The canyon is dangerous, too. Cougars, bobcats, and bears prowl here sometimes, so I am scared to go up alone, scared to go through that gate in the deer fence. So I go with Dad, who loves wild places and wants to save them all.

As we walk along the creek, I think about dryads and naiads— those Greek spirits of wood and stream, like Pan— and wonder if the Farm and canyon have spirits too. I wish I could ask Chloe what she thinks. Before Chloe moved away, we explored the canyon together. She filled her sketchbook with pencil drawings of flowers, leaves, birds, and bugs.

Once she even drew a dead rattlesnake. Chloe knows all the common names of every plant and insect, and all their Latin names, too. When Dad and I reach the first meadow in the canyon, we find a half-eaten deer sprawled across the trail. Her throat is a bloody gash torn by hungry teeth.

A sour stink already rises from her guts savaged across the dirt. Inside, pokes the delicate hoof and head of the baby fawn— dead. Lightning must have struck it during a storm long ago. Suddenly I see that storm in my imagination: A hundred lightning bolts fracture the sky into a skeleton of light. One bolt strikes the tree— it stands— trembling, crackling, absorbing unimaginable power. I blink, and now I see that the black snag looks like someone wearing a black robe with a hood. My skin creeps and crawls— the stink of the dead deer rising around me— because I know, just know, that black snag has a powerful evil spirit.

One branch with a knob on the end thrusts out like an arm holding a black ball. And it points straight at me. The Demon Snag Halfway up the canyon the blackened snag on the hill looms like a demon, conjuring and cackling evil dreams of the wild— cougar teeth and bear claws and being eaten alive— until fear cripples my heart. I call for a wizard, but they are too busy fighting dragons. But I am only Eva of the Farm, armed with a shining imagination that makes me run home fast.

I send Chloe an e-mail about the dead deer and her baby. For two long days I wait for an answer from Seattle. The Chloe I know would have dissected that dead deer. The Chloe I know would have whipped out her sketchbook and drawn a hundred pictures of that dead deer. The Chloe I know is an explorer and mastermind of daring deeds.

Now she only sends one-sentence e-mails. The screensaver flashes— a picture of Chloe and me standing by a canoe at Camp Laughing Waters. Wreaths of wildflowers crown our heads. The picture looks like a scene from a fairy tale. I put one hand to my side. Tucked beneath my ribs is the jagged hole from losing Grandma Helen— frayed and sore around the edges. Now Chloe stands on the edge of that hole— about to fall in, about to rip it wider, about to vanish forever too.

I sigh and turn away from the computer. I swing the skylight open on the slanted wall over my bed and hope for a breeze to come skipping in, and one does— a breeze so fierce my sun hat sails off the doorknob. I climb down the ladder to find Achilles to watch the storm with me. He always laughs at thunder and lightning, as a proper Greek hero should. Twelve emeralds— twelve for the months of the year, green for the Farm, Grandma Helen used to say— sparkle around the watch face.

My great-grandmother Nita gave Grandma Helen that watch. Just before she died, Grandma Helen gave it to Mom. Someday, Mom will pass it on to me. She lets me wear the watch on my birthday. I run outside to find Dad. On the last slide, a polar bear stands beside a melting glacier. He could be anywhere. Grandma Helen used to say that when Dad got up in the morning he hit the ground running. He seems even busier since she died. As the slide show repeats, I guess where Dad is. And I do find him, outside in the tree nursery— a garden where he plants baby evergreen trees in brave rows.

When they grow big enough, he transplants them around the Farm.

Questions?

The branches on the baby trees dance in the rebellious wind. Dad plunks one little ponderosa pine into the wheelbarrow. Across the hills the pine trees roar— sparkling, black-veined emeralds.

Deep in his den the coyote shivers, knowing there will soon be thunder. Up the canyon the aspens shimmy in the rain pelting their white bark. Along the deer fence the beans snap, and the corn careens across the garden. In the sky clouds ponderous as melons begin their slow black calling. From my skylight I see the flash of a meadowlark singing the bright memory of sunlight. Achilles claps his hands and croons when the storm flings jagged pearls of hail against the skylight.

When the hail finally stops, rain parades against the glass on and on and on while the robins hop over the wet grass and stuff their beaks with worms. So I build a block castle for Achilles. I plop his toy horse inside the castle walls and tell him the Greek story of the Trojan horse. At just the right moment in the story— when the Greeks are sneaking out of the horse to destroy the city of Troy— Achilles reaches out with both hands and knocks down the castle I have so carefully built. He shrieks and gurgles with glee.

KIRKUS REVIEW

When at last the rain stops, the desert heat prowls across the land again. Sprinklers In this desert land arcs of water— silver rainbows— pulse from a thousand sprinklers day and night, sweeping circles around the apple and pear trees. A week later, I walk out to the shed, looking for Mom and Dad, to tell them about a pear tree with dead leaves on one of its branches. Tools hang in orderly rows from hooks on the walls— saws, axes, hammers, wrenches, coils of rope, and a dozen pruning shears.

It broke a month before she got sick. Mom hauled it into the shop, planning to fix it. Dust rises when I lift the blue sheet. The spinning wheel is beautiful. I used to write my best poems to the sound of the wheel humming while Grandma Helen spun. Footsteps crunch in the gravel outside the shop door. The door creaks open and Dad strides in, his face grim.

My breath shoots into my lungs as I remember the pear tree with dead leaves. More days of heat and rain brought fire blight, a horrible disease, I know, which might destroy our entire pear orchard. Hour after hour, day after day, I pile dead branches into the wheelbarrow and trundle them to the bonfire. Only butchery and burning will keep the disease from spreading and stop the fire blight— maybe. Our orchard curls up in smoke that stings tears into my eyes as I say good-bye to my lost friends the trees.

I know Mom and Dad borrowed all that money for a loan from the bank to buy the new tractor and build the new shed. I stare down at the scrambled eggs speckling my blue plate for the fourth time this week. I shut right up. The answers lie in math and science and economics— not poetry. A poem about the plight of the polar bears might inspire people to help them. We make the most difference when we use the gifts we have. And Eva is a gifted poet. I finger the hole in my shorts.

I like the thrift shop, though, because anything is possible there. For three dollars you can stuff whatever you want in a bag. I can get behind that. Though I have now moved many times, no matter how many times it happens, no matter how many times I lose a friend or face death of someone I love, it always seems bad and like it displaces my soul for a little while. The way Eva gathers the greater powers around her seems like good, comforting advice. Dec 01, Wendy rated it liked it Shelves: This one grew on me slowly.

I never loved every part of it, but there were aspects that I loved. The setting is nicely realized, and eventually I came to appreciate the way the poems work into the main story. There several poems I couldn't buy for a moment as being written by a year-old. The friendship between Eva and the Bead Woman is a little messy and strange; not necessarily a bad thing, but as an adult I found the Bead Woman kind of sad, overly dependent on a child, and I don't think tha This one grew on me slowly. The friendship between Eva and the Bead Woman is a little messy and strange; not necessarily a bad thing, but as an adult I found the Bead Woman kind of sad, overly dependent on a child, and I don't think that was intended.

The parts where Eva gets the publicity and the letters, I could have done without that; it didn't seem real. But the initial scene in the farmer's market Oct 10, Shelley rated it liked it Shelves: Book in verse about a 10 year old who loves the farm she's raised on, but tough economic times, the death of her grandmother and illness of her brother conspire to take the farm away.

That sounds a little bleaker than it is - it's filled with hope and courage and imagination - but it was definitely rather dark. Also, does anyone else find themselves skimming over text in italics? Two books in a row employed that technique, either for fantasies or poems, and I can barely ever make myself concentr Book in verse about a 10 year old who loves the farm she's raised on, but tough economic times, the death of her grandmother and illness of her brother conspire to take the farm away. Two books in a row employed that technique, either for fantasies or poems, and I can barely ever make myself concentrate enough to get through those bits.

Sep 13, Kris rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is a heartwarming novel written in verse, as told by Eva, a young poet. Eva loves her life on the farm and often writes poems about things she sees and thinks. In an effort to help the family, she decides to sell some of her poems, and meets an unlikely friend at the farmers market. The story is about hope, imagination and conquering fears. Jun 16, Colby Sharp rated it really liked it Shelves: I think Eva will touch many hearts. Sep 08, Terri rated it really liked it. Twelve-year-old Eva loves life on the farm in eastern Washington and can't imagine living anywhere else.

She is a gifted poet but is too shy to share her writing with the world a la Emily Dickinson. When the bank threatens to foreclose, she decides she to share her work if it will help save the farm. There is no happy ever after, but Eva's tale is realistic and filled with hope. If I could have given three and a half stars, I would have, but it's better than a mere three. I liked the poems in t Twelve-year-old Eva loves life on the farm in eastern Washington and can't imagine living anywhere else.

I liked the poems in this book very much, but they don't read like a year-old wrote them When a book is written from a child's point of view, the voice must ring true. The narrative free verse is plausible, but the lyrical poetry has "talented adult" written all over it. Anyone who has ever lived on and loved a family farm will understand and identify with the themes and emotions running through Calhoun's story and her lyrical poetry.

Apr 28, Taylor rated it it was amazing. I love the writing style of this book which made it easy read and fast page turner. The author used very descriptive, elegant words through out this book and I love how the poems that the character makes were shown for the reader to look at. I felt deep emotions like anger and sadness from loss and decisions that other characters made in the book. The main character explored many of these emotions throughout the story from what may have been the end of her farm, friendship, and family.

I'd recom I love the writing style of this book which made it easy read and fast page turner. I'd recommend this to any reader who wants a fast read and story that deals with problems that have to get overcome.

Jun 13, Penny Peck rated it liked it Shelves: Financial setbacks mean the family may lose the farm, which has been in Eva's mother's family for generations. Eva is a little too uninformed for her age, with such little knowledge of things like Facebook or Twitter, or pop culture in general, you would think she lived "off the grid," but that is not the case.

Also, Eva's poems, which are set off in italics in the text, are a little too melodramatic. On the plus side, the adult characters seem very well-rounded and realistic. Still, many tweens will relate to Eva's overly emotional personality and the timely story. May 21, Tova rated it really liked it. This book is very fast paced, as it written in verse.

It was well written and enjoyable. I also went to a young writers workshop with the author at my local bookstore and got my copy signed and she's really sweet. This story to boot is set in the Methow Valley which is where I'm from. Jul 25, Rebecca Gomez rated it really liked it Shelves: A moving story about a young girl who is determined to save her family's farm. The girl, Eva, is completely believable as a daughter, a sister, a poet. The verse drew me in and tugged on my heart strings.

Oct 26, Sandy D. Wonderful novel in free verse aimed at y.

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