Lucy and her family — Mama, Boots (her dad), little sister Gracie, toddler brother Teddy, and the chickens — are traveling to her great aunt Frankie’s in North Dakota to help out because the Red River is rising near Frankie’s home. Lucy’s father wanted to be a poet until he started farming and decided he could never write a poem as beautiful as a cow. Mama loves the music of Langhorne Slim. (Lucy thinks Mama would love to be Langhorne Slim.) Gracie draws, and Teddy, just starting to talk, can sing pitch-perfect. As for Lucy? She wants to be a poet, and someday soon she’s going to writer her father a poem as beautiful as a cow. Patricia MacLachlan’s story for newly independent readers may have a slightly too perfect family (although Mama has a welcome undercurrent of uncertainty) but the depth of feeling among its characters — from independent Frankie’s slight annoyance when they arrive to the terror when Teddy temporarily disappears — are genuine in this lovely portrait of a young writer just beginning to find her own voice. (Ages 7–9)