What to Read Next If You Loved Miss Rumphius
Miss Rumphius wants to make the world a more beautiful place, a legacy that comes with a deep connection to nature. These books take up that project, showing that family, home, and nature can change us for the better.
The Complete Brambly Hedge
The illustrations are the real stars of The Complete Brambly Hedge, a collection of old-fashioned stories about very civilized mice living the cottagecore life across the four seasons. (All ages)
The Secret Garden
Nature has the power to change more than the environment in The Secret Garden. Bitter, guarded Mary Lennox doesn’t find a warm welcome when she’s sent to live at her uncle’s Yorkshire manor, but she does gradually find herself. (All ages)
The Becket List
In The Becket List, Becket is determined that her new life on Blackberry Farm will be the best ever — but the reality never seems to live up to her expectations. Slowly, she realizes that loving herself — just the way she is — is the key to living the life of her dreams. (Middle grades)
Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer
In Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer, Sophie adjusts to her new life on a rural farm by writing lots of letters — many of them to Redwood Farm Supply, which specializes in the “unusual” chickens that suddenly seem to be everywhere — and doing all kinds of strange things. (Middle grades)
Across the Pond
Callie’s family movies to a castle in Scotland in Across the Pond, and Callie takes on sexism in the local birding troop with the help of some new friends, thanks in part to an old birdwatching journal she discovers in a locked trunk. There’s a core of real sweetness in this book that I loved: We all sometimes feel like we don’t belong, and we’re all delighted when we discover that we’ve found a community. For birding enthusiasts, for middle grades readers who enjoy realistic fiction, for anyone who’s ever wished for that castle in Scotland — you’ll want to pick this one up. (Middle grades)
All Creatures Great and Small
Small town English country life between the world wars is illuminated through one veterinarian’s adventures in All Creatures Great and Small. Suzanne says, “My love affair with these books — All Creatures and its sequels — goes back over 30 years. In them, Herriot tells stories of his days as a Yorkshire veterinarian working on both farm animals and pets, beginning when he is just out of school in the 1930s and has joined the practice run by eccentric Siegfried Farnon, assisted (more or less) by Siegfried’s hapless brother, Tristan. The tales are sometimes tragic, as when a farmer loses both his livestock and his livelihood, and sometimes hilarious (“Mrs. Pumphrey’s Tricki Woo has gone flop-bott again”), while always being warmly affectionate and self-deprecating. Supposedly these are Herriot’s real-life experiences — ‘James Herriot’ is the pen name of Alf Wight — but over the years there have been different opinions on how much is real and how much is fiction, so that I’ve moved my own copies from the ‘memoir’ shelf to ‘fiction’ and back again, but when the writing is this enjoyable it doesn’t really matter where they end up.” (Middle grades)
The War that Saved My Life
In The War that Saved My Life, Ava is evacuated from her cramped London apartment to the British countryside — where she discovers that even in wartime, life can be happier than she ever suspected. (Middle grades)
Far from the Madding Crowd
Bathsheba Everdeen is smart, capable, and ready to take over her uncle’s farm in 1830s rural Essex in Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy’s least depressing novel. If only all those suitors would leave her alone and let her focus on her work. (Spoiler: They will not.) (High school)
Cold Comfort Farm
Orphaned socialite Flora decides Cold Comfort Farm sounds like a perfect spot for a little adventure in this tongue-in-cheek satire of British rural life in the 1930s. (High school)
Miss Buncle’s Book
Who wrote the book about Silverstream and its inhabitants? Nobody suspects meek, 30-something Barbara Buncle of the skewering story, but it is indeed Miss Buncle’s Book, and it launches Miss Buncle and the folk of Silverstream on a series of adventures. (High school)
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