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Hardscrabble Harvest
by Dahlov Ipcar

$16.95
Hardcover, Illustrated Children's Book
ISBN: 978-1-934031-24-7



View pages from Hardscrabble Harvest.

The Little Fisherman
(written by Margaret Wise Brown)
The Cat at Night
My Wonderful Christmas Tree


The DVD Dahlov Ipcar: Maine Master features a visit to her home and studio.

ABOUT THE BOOK
"The farmer plants
early in the spring.
He'll be lucky
if he harvests a thing!"

So begins this charming story in verse about the running battle between a farm family and the mischievous animals that plunder their fields. Crows peck at freshly sown seeds, ducks eat new strawberry plants, rabbits nibble on tender lettuces, and raccoons dine on ears of ripening corn. All summer long the young farmer and his wife are hard-pressed to protect their growing crops.

But autumn comes at last, and the family is ready to celebrate its harvest – bushels of red tomatoes, a cellar full of apples for cider and pumpkins for pie. In rollicking verse and wonderful illustrations, Dahlov Ipcar tells of all the hard work that goes into making a bountiful fall harvest.

REVIEWS
"Living off the land can be rewarding – and frustrating – as Dahlov Ipcar learned when she and her husband moved from New York City to a Georgetown farm in the late 1930s. Her classic children's book Hardscrabble Harvest is a gorgeously illustrated ode to rural living."
– The Maine Mag

"This does for the small imagination what Barbara Kingsolver's locavore-best-seller did for their parents, what Common Ground Fair does for the eyeball ... and all with wit and charm and just a hopeful touch of nostalgia. It's not just for the kids, either – if you have an older back-to-the-lander buddy, it's a great gift for any occasion."
– The Lincoln County News

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dahlov Ipcar was born in Vermont, raised in Greenwich Village, and summered in Maine after her parents (the famed sculptor William Zorach and artist Marguerite Zorach) bought a farm on Georgetown Island in 1923. Thirteen years later, eighteen-year-old Dahlov, an aspiring artist, married Adoph Ipcar. The young couple left New York City in 1937 to live on the Maine farm where they first met.

By the early 1940s, Ipcar had nearly given up thoughts of writing and illustrating books, but was contacted by a New York publisher to illustrate The Little Fisherman, the latest title by Margaret Wise Brown. The struggling young artist jumped at the chance, and this charming title helped launch a four decade run that saw her write and illustrate more than thirty children's books of her own.

Today, Ipcar's intricate, distinctive, and fanciful artwork is known worldwide, with pieces of her work in the collections of numerous renowned museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Meanwhile, Ipcar still lives and paints in the 1860s farmhouse that she shared with Adolph for nearly seventy years. She once said she didn't want celebrity or fame; she just "wanted to be recognized." In retrospect, a fairly modest statement for a Maine – and American – treasure.