A fine story of family adventure, especially about Joanda who picks cotton with her brothers and sisters and parents, while their little dog, Trouble, frisks alongside. Getting the long sack full means more money for groceries and “play-purties” in town on Saturday.

Joanda knows what fun it is to spend money she has earned herself. She knows, too, what it means when the money is all gone and the family fortunes are at ebb tide. Whatever happens, Joanda knows her help is greatly needed. She always shares in the family's ups-and-downs, whether it is caring for her baby sister, helping to make a meager Christmas, or facing the mysterious loss of the load of cotton that was to mean the beginning of independence for the family.

Lois Lenski, through her regional stories, is doing a great work of drawing the children of America together in understanding and friendship. When the cotton-picking children in Arkansas read Strawberry Girl, they wrote to Miss Lenski asking her to write a book about them. This led to a visit from Miss Lenski to make their acquaintance and learn their life, and a subsequent visit to see the cotton crop picked and to draw, on the spot, the pictures that make this book, like the others of the series, a true, colorful and sympathetic record of life in its region.

From the dust jacket