Heather Gardam opens her series about Patti, a 10-year-old farm girl, with a highly engaging collection of linked stories called Life on the Farm. Reminiscent of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web in its gentle tone and the clarity and precision of the prose, this collection is sure to have wide appeal.

Patti is an extremely likable protagonist. Like many 10-year-old girls, she desperately struggles to keep up with her older sibling, Jamie, and she pines for a horse of her own. Her rarer qualities are a heroic dose of determination and an unquenchable sense of fairness. Like Fern Arable, Patti is hot to defend creatures more helpless than herself, whether it be a small dog pursued by a pack of much larger ones, or a Brownie pushed around by a bullying Girl Guide.

Patti is an enthusiastic participant in all aspects of country life: entering competitions in the county fair, making maple syrup, and baling hay. Her life is not one long bucolic idyll, however. Patti confronts some harsh realities when a mink slaughters her baby chicks and when she meets her best friend’s mom, a slovenly mother who’s incapacitated by obesity and smoker’s cough.

My only criticism of this book, and it’s a slight one, is that Patti’s world seems remarkably sheltered from popular culture. I’d venture a guess that rural children watch TV, follow fads, and listen to pop stations as much as their urban counterparts. Patti’s world has a lovely, timeless quality, but I’m not sure, much as I’d like to, that I can entirely believe in it.