MaineBusiness.com

YARMOUTH, MAINE (August 2009)—When Dahlov Ipcar and her husband Adolph were scraping together a living in the 1930s and 1940s and relying on their Georgetown farm to help them get by, they understood the struggles faced by family farmers. And Dahlov never forgot. The renowned artist later captured the hard work, from the frustrations of fending off local wildlife to the joys of harvest, in her classic illustrated children's book, Hardscrabble Harvest.

Now, the long out-of-print tribute to small, local farmers is set for rerelease by Maine-based Islandport Press on Sept. 15. Hardscrabble will mark the fourth Ipcar children's book in the last 18 months to be rescued from out-of-print status by the independent publisher, following The Little Fisherman, which was written by Margaret Wise Brown, My Wonderful Christmas Tree and The Cat at Night.

"Dahlov is an amazing talent," said Dean Lunt, editor-in-chief and publisher of Islandport. "It has been a literary crime that so many of her books were allowed to fall out of print. We feel privileged that we have been able to bring back four of her best."

Hardscrabble Harvest uses rollicking verse and Ipcar's distinctive illustrations to tell a charming story about the running battle between a farm family and the mischievous animals that plunder their fields. Crows peck at freshly sown seeds, ducks eat new strawberry plants, rabbits nibble on tender lettuces, and raccoons dine on ears of ripening corn. All summer long the young farmer and his wife are hard-pressed to protect their growing crops. But autumn comes at last, and the family is ready to celebrate its harvest—bushels of red tomatoes, a cellar full of apples for cider and pumpkins for pie.

After illustrating The Little Fisherman in 1945, Ipcar, now 91, wrote and illustrated more than 30 children’s books and continued to develop her reputation as an artist. Today, Ipcar’s intricate and fanciful artwork is known worldwide, with pieces in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is represented in all the leading art museums of Maine, as well as in many corporate and private collections throughout the U.S. In 1972, Ipcar and her husband received the Maine Governor's Award for "significant contributions to Maine in the broad field of the arts and humanities." She has received honorary degrees from the University of Maine, Colby, and Bates colleges. In 1998, the University of Minnesota honored her with The Kerlan Award in Children's Literature.

For more information visit www.islandportpress.com; call 207-846-3344; or email books@islandportpress.com.