Farm life book series in reading order

by Thomas L. Tedrow

by Mary Christner Borntrager

Michael Morpurgo

171 books• 5 series

Sir Michael Morpurgo, born 5 October 1943, is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist best known for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). Morpurgo served as the third Children's Laureate from 2003 to 2005 and is President of BookTrust, a children's reading charity. Recurring themes include outsiders who triumph, survival and bonds with nature, set in places such as the Cornish coast and the First World War trenches. The catalogue holds 171 books from It Never Rained (1974) to Down Burrow Lane (2026), including the Mudpuddle Farm series.

Jon Katz

36 books• 1 series

Dogs and farm life fill the later part of Jon Katz's catalogue; crime fiction fills the earlier. Katz, born in 1947, is an American journalist and photographer who wrote for HotWired, Slashdot and Slate, and whose first books include the Suburban Detective novels and the character Kit Deleeuw. Writing on geek subculture followed, then a long sequence on the relationship between people and animals, closing with Gus's Year in 2020. Thirty-six titles in all.

Gary Paulsen

181 books• 17 series

Survival and outdoor adventure run through Gary Paulsen's writing for young readers. The catalogue holds 181 books, from Some Birds Don't Fly (1968) to Northwind (2022), at a median length of 105 pages. Brian Robeson, Francis Tucket, Duncan Culpepper, Murphy and the World of Adventure books head the series lines, with non-fiction and picture books alongside. No new Paulsen title has appeared since 2022.

James Herriot wrote about veterinary practice in the English countryside, mixing memoir, anecdote and animal stories. The catalogue holds 39 titles published between 1970 and 2023, among them All Creatures Great and Small (1972), All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974) and the 2023 collection The Wonderful World of James Herriot. All Creatures Great and Small is the best known sequence, and Herriot also wrote children's books such as Bonny's Big Day. The books are short at a median of 180 pages, and the catalogue is closed.

Janette Oke, born Janette Steeves on 18 February 1935, is a Canadian author of inspirational fiction, often set in pioneer times with women as the lead characters. Bethany House published Love Comes Softly, the first Oke novel, in 1979. When Calls the Heart (1983) opened the Canadian West series and became the basis for a television series with the same title. The catalogue holds 79 Oke books, with The Pharisee's Wife (2025) the newest. Series include Love Comes Softly, Prairie Legacy, Women of the West, Song of Acadia and Janette Oke's Animal Friends. Subjects include women pioneers, Canada and Christian fiction.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

67 books• 7 series

Laura Ingalls Wilder (7 February 1867 to 10 February 1957) was an American writer, teacher and journalist. The Little House on the Prairie children's books, published from 1932 to 1943, drew on Wilder's childhood in a pioneer settler family. Catalogued Wilder titles from those years include Little House in the Big Woods (1932), Farmer Boy (1933), Little House on the Prairie (1935), On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937), By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939), The Long Winter (1940), Little Town on the Prairie (1941) and These Happy Golden Years (1943). Catalogue subjects include frontier and pioneer life, farm life and families.

Willa Cather

59 books• 1 series

Willa Cather wrote about the Nebraska plains, frontier and farm life, and the immigrants who settled them. Her earliest catalogued titles are short stories from 1896, and the Great Plains Trilogy is the sequence her fiction is grouped around. Sixty-nine catalogued titles, poetry and collected editions included, run through reissues dated to 2022.

Roger Lea MacBride, born in 1929 and died in 1995, was an American lawyer, political figure and writer who inherited Laura Ingalls Wilder's estate. MacBride edited and published further Wilder material, then wrote the Rose Years, a spin-off series set in the Little House on the Prairie world and following Rose Wilder Lane through Missouri farm life and frontier schools. He also pushed the development of the television adaptation, and served a single term as a Republican in the Vermont House of Representatives in the 1960s. Fifteen catalogued titles date from 1976 to 2001.

Enid Blyton

957 books• 42 series

Enid Blyton (11 August 1897 to 28 November 1968) was an English children's writer and one of the best-selling authors of children's literature, with more than 600 million copies sold and translations into ninety languages. Blyton wrote on education, natural history, fantasy, mystery and biblical stories. Noddy, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, the Five Find-Outers and Malory Towers are the best-remembered Blyton books, and St Clare's, Mary Mouse and Toyland Stories are also listed. The catalogue opens with The Enid Blyton Book of Fairies (1924), and The Naughtiest Girl in the School (1930) and The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair (1937) follow. Titles dated after Blyton's death also appear, up to Stories of Wonders and Wishes (2023).

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

131 books• 11 series

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, born in 1933, wrote 131 catalogued books for children and young adults across half a century. Shiloh, a quartet of children's novels, won the Newbery Medal in 1992, and the Alice McKinley series became one of the most frequently challenged sets of books of the early 21st century. The Boy/Girl Battle, Bessledorf Mysteries, Witch Saga, Cat Pack and Roxie and the Hooligans fill out the list, which runs from To Make a Wee Moon (1969) to Roxie and the Hooligans at Buzzard's Roost (2018). Family life, schools, friendship and siblings are the constant subjects, at a median of 154 pages.

Patricia MacLachlan (March 3, 1938 to March 31, 2022), born Patricia Marie Pritzkau, was an American children's writer. MacLachlan's novel Sarah, Plain and Tall won the Newbery Medal in 1986 and gave its name to a series. The catalogue holds 63 books for young readers, including the Barkus series, Arthur, for the Very First Time and My Poet (2022). Family life, dogs, grandparents, friendship and frontier life are frequent subjects.

Carol Drinkwater is a British actress, writer and filmmaker born on 22 April 1948 and based in France. Drinkwater played Helen Herriot in the television adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small, which brought the 1985 Variety Club Television Personality of the Year award. The catalogue lists 30 books from The Haunted School (1985) to An Act of Love (2022). Molly and Molly on the Run appeared in 1996 and The Olive Farm in 2001. Olive and Molly are the named Drinkwater series, and subject tags include Provence, farm life, the olive trade and children's fiction.

Thomas L. Tedrow published 16 catalogued books in a short span, from 1992 to 1996. The Tedrow series are Days of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Younguns, Dino Mites and Troll Family Adventures. Missouri Homestead, Children of Promise, Good Neighbors and Land of Promise all appeared in 1992. Frontier and pioneer life, farm life, Missouri and Christian life are among the subjects of this children's fiction. Dino Mites Declare War and Dorothy: Return to Oz date from 1993, and The Legend Of The Missouri Mud Monster (1996) is the last title.

John Steinbeck

44 books• 1 series

John Steinbeck's catalogue holds 44 titles, from Cup of Gold (1929) through to Steinbeck in Vietnam in 2012. Social conditions and American life supply the subject matter, with travel writing and the Cannery Row grouping among the named sets. Early entries include The Pastures of Heaven (1932), The Red Pony (1933), Tortilla Flat (1935) and In Dubious Battle (1936). The catalogue is listed as complete.

Wendell Berry (August 5, 1934 - August 31, 2026) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, farmer, environmental activist and cultural critic closely tied to rural Kentucky. Berry set out agrarian themes in The Unsettling of America (1977) and The Gift of Good Land (1981). The Port William novels and stories, including A Place on Earth, Jayber Crow and That Distant Land, examine rural community life. Berry received the National Humanities Medal, delivered the 2012 Jefferson Lecture and belonged to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The catalogue lists 104 books from Nathan Coulter (1960) to Marce Catlett (2025).

Pearl S. Buck

99 books• 1 series

China is the subject Pearl S. Buck is catalogued for. East Wind: West Wind (1930) is the earliest of 99 entries, followed by The Good Earth (1931), Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935); House Of Earth is the one named series. Farm life, marriage, families and social customs fill the subject tags. No newer title is dated, and the listing is marked likely complete.

Jane Gardam wrote for children and for adults and worked as a literary critic, with reviews in The Spectator and The Telegraph and writing for BBC Radio. Gardam took the Whitbread Award twice, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2005 and appointed OBE in the 2009 New Year Honours. Thirty-five books are catalogued between A Few Fair Days (1971) and The Stories of Jane Gardam (2014), with Old Filth the one series listed. England, family life, adolescence and girls recur as subjects.

Jan and Stan Berenstain wrote picture books about the Berenstain Bears. The run begins with The Big Honey Hunt (1962) and reaches 400 titles by The Berenstain Bears: Father's Day Blessings (2018). Family life, school, brothers and sisters, scouting, Christmas and Christian life supply the recurring subjects, and many of the books are told in rhyme. A median length of 32 pages places them with early readers. Publication peaked in the 1990s and the catalogue is likely complete.

Lucy Daniels is the name on 108 children's books published from 1995 to 2019, with Animal Ark, an imaginary place and organization, among the subjects. Donkey on the Doorstep (1995) is the earliest title, and Llama on the Loose (2019) the newest. Series include Little Animal Ark, New Animal Ark, Animal Ark Holiday Special, Jess: The Border Collie, Nine Lives, Safari Summer, Little Dolphin and Hope Meadows. Subjects include veterinarians, horses, riding schools, dogs, cats, kittens and dolphins.

Virginia Hamilton (March 12, 1936 to February 19, 2002) was an American children's author who wrote 41 books. M.C. Higgins, the Great (1974) won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 1975 Newbery Medal. Hamilton's work explores the African-American experience, which Hamilton termed "Liberation Literature". Further honours were the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1992 and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 1995. The catalogue lists 44 entries from Zeely (1967) to Liberation Literature (2024), including The House of Dies Drear (1968), The Planet of Junior Brown (1971) and Justice and Her Brothers (1978).

Steve Augarde is a British author and artist, born in 1950, who writes and illustrates for children. Alongside novels for children and young adults, Augarde has made over seventy picture books for younger readers, pop-up books among them, designing the paper engineering for those, and illustrated the Little Red Car books written by Matthew Price. The Touchstone Trilogy and the Barnaby Shrew stories are the named series here, inside a catalogue of 37 entries dated 1977 to 2020 at a median length of 12 pages. Fairies, farm life, tractors and nursery rhymes recur among the listed subjects.

Jodi Lynn Anderson is an American writer for children. The catalogue holds 17 Anderson books, beginning with Peaches (2005) and ending with The Palace of Dreams (2023). Anderson's series are Peaches, May Bird and Thirteen Witches. The Secrets of Peaches (2007), Tiger Lily (2012) and The Moment Collector (2014) are among the titles. Listed subjects include fantasy, friendship, farm life, ghost stories and teenage girls.

Will Weaver, born William Weller in Park Rapids, Minnesota in 1950, is an American writer. The catalogue lists 17 books published between 1986 and 2023, opening with Red Earth, White Earth (1986) and closing at Power & Light (2023). Farm life, the Midwest, wilderness survival, schools and automobile racing run through the subject headings, with Minnesota named directly. Three series carry the Weaver credit: Motor, Billy Baggs and Memory Boy. Doug Ohman shares the credit on Barns of Minnesota (2005).

K.D. McCrite has 16 catalogued books published between 2011 and 2019, all credited to McCrite. Confessions of April Grace is the series filed under the name, and the catalogue also attaches McCrite to the Annie's Attic Mysteries and Secrets of the Castleton Manor Library listings. Subject records name Christian life, family life, farm life, middle schools, theatre and swindling. The run opens with In Front of God and Everybody (2011) and ends at A Scary Tale Wedding (2019).