Sugaring Time

This book follows the process of making syrup, from maple trees to the breakfast table, from the perspective of a family member. The photos bring the story home. You can feel the biting winter weather, see the flowing sap, and appreciate how so much sap reduces down to a precious, relatively small amount of syrup. Our school recommends this book for second grade. Though there may be more reading involved than a younger child would want to do, it is worthwhile to read it with, or read it to, your second grade student. Don't miss this "How It's Made" adventure in book form!

Such a great book. I remember the family on the farm next to my gram's taking me out on chilly mornings with the hairy footed clydesdales pulling the big bin to collect the buckets of sap to take back to the sugar house to boil. What a fun time. We would boil the sap till it turned to syrup and then boil it till it balled up. We'd pour it over packed snow and make a maple candy like a caramel. Great memories, great little book.

This book is a combination of describing the process of making maple syrup from early spring when the sap rises, to winter when the sap is regenerating for the spring sap rising, and a pictorial and simple telling of the process a family in Vermont undertakes annually to make their maple syrup. The pictures are simply gorgeous of the horses in the snow as they break the trails and bring in the sap to begin the sugaring process. This book features the family of Dr. Don Lacey, his wife Alice, and their children Jonathan, Angie, Jeremy, and their friend Max, as they go through the process of tapping trees, hanging buckets, gathering sap, and participate in the first run of making maple syrup. This is a warm and informative story of the Lacey family sugaring traditions and the time proven process of making maple sugar. As you read the words and view the pictures, you can almost feel the cold, smell the woodsmoke, and taste the sugary maple syrup. This book is a delight for the mind, the eyes, and the senses. It makes you wish you could really be there to enjoy the experience of making maple syrup.

Wonderful book to read to children to explain sugaring.

Great!

This book is eminently suitable to an upper-elementary classroom studying the New England region or the economy of Vermont. Step by step, with one chapter devoted to each part of the maple syrup-making process, the black and white photography and clear text leads you through a wintery world of magic. I sat down and read this book cover to cover and then immediately read it all over again, not wanting to leave the peaceful world of the sugarbush (a grove of maple trees). The crisp and snowy wonderland setting does not mean that sugaring is easy, however; it is intensely hard work spread out over a four week time period. Maple syrup is harvested in March, in that break between coldest winter and earliest spring, when the days are above freezing and brightly lit but the nights are still cold. The direct, strengthening light of the sun warming the trees after the vernal equinox gets their sap flowing and it is from this sap that the syrup is made. That part I knew but everything else about this book revealed a world that was new to me, from the exact temperature sap becomes syrup and what happens if you hit too high or too low, how long the sap will last before it spoils, how the syrup is tested, the precise density it must be to store properly, even how old you have to be before your parents let you Really Help (which is, of course, the part most interesting to small children). This is a world where everyone travels by ski or by sled, which is amazing to me; I can't imagine that depth of winter. The text is as warm and delicious as maple syrup itself: "The sparkling sap, clear and bright, runs like streams of Christmas tinsle. They each take a lick and wonder how so much crystal sweetness can come from a gnarled tree older than all their grandparents put together." Close-up pictures of all steps of the process as well as the exact equipment used makes this book as informative as it is enjoyable. A fascinating look at an age-old process, this book is a must-read for any unit on winter, trees, and the magic of nature.

This is not the complete book to maple syrup however there are some useful time lines and info. Mostly a story of collecting syrup.

As a youngster, I lived in Cabot, Vermont in the early fifties and my brother and I used to hang around the sugaring operation up the road in the spring. This book takes you along on the complete sugaring experience, from drilling the tap holes and hanging the buckets to the 'sugar on snow' party after the last snowfall of the year. VERY highly recommended.