It’s unusual for me to feature a newly published young adult title here but I was bowled over by this one and want to share my reasons. Besides, the principle behind Susan’s Bookshelves has always been to keep the range it as wide as possible. And actually I liked this book so much that I gobbled it up as if it were an adult novel and cried at the end. As ever, it’s anyway a bit daft to categorise books, especially fiction, at all. A good book is just that, irrespective of who the reader is.
Hannah,11, and her three siblings live with their nice, hardworking but somewhat ineffectual, widowed father on the family farm. It’s very hard to make ends meet. Then the landlord’s agent announces that it is to be sold, probably for redevelopment. The only hope is to purchase it but the price is £2m plus £80,000 stamp duty. At this, nothing daunted, the four children and Hannah’s friend Lottie, decide that when their father isn’t looking, they will start a farm café (12 year old Martha is a good cook and organiser), and at the same time, sell some of the functionally useless old machinery which is lying about in the barn. Then Lottie’s mother who works in PR starts to help along with Adam, the farm worker and Alan who’s an accountant. They deal with journalists, TV, opposition and lots more. Various people volunteer to promote the concept of a community farm. It’s eleventh hour stuff but no surprises for guessing that there’s a happy ending..
At the same time, lots of other things are going on in this meaty book. Hannah is bullied at school by another girl who is evidently deeply troubled but it’s very painful for Hannah who has been cast in the school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The rehearsals become an affectionate critique of the play which, I suspect many a young reader enjoying this book will want to see, having encountered it here. (Hurrah for Shakespeare!). The teacher Ms Ellis, who is directing the play, is an interesting character because, decent as she is, she fails to see how she is being manipulated by Miranda and therefore misjudges Hannah. Let that be a lesson to all teachers.
This novel is full of feisty, intelligent, proactive, plausible people – especially the five children at its centre who strive determinedly to get things done. We’re firmly in the present. They use computers and mobile phones but there’s a faint, and rather gorgeous whiff of the Famous Five in the idea of children achieving miracles when adults can’t or won’t. They are all, in their different ways, so admirably capable. Moreover, I loved the animals such as Jasper the tame, hand-reared sheep who eventually gets a role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And of course, if you’ve followed Susan’s Bookshelves thus far (over three and a half years now) you won’t be surprised to know that I pounced on The Great Farm Rescue with glee, when sent it for review in a magazine, because there isn’t a dragon, talking insect or magic potion in sight – just fiction depicting real people in the real world which is what I like.
The Great Farm Rescue is actually the third in the Hannah’s Farm series. I hadn’t read the earlier books (although I might now) and can assure you that it reads perfectly well as a standalone.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable
