What are three similes from the first three chapters of Lyddie?

A simile is a type of figurative language that uses a direct comparison.  You say that something is like something else.  Similes usually have the words “like” or “as” used to compare two normally unlike things.  They can be used to describe settings or characterize.

A good example of a simile is in the description of the bear.  When Lyddie, her mother, and her siblings are home, a bear wanders into their cabin.  The bear is hungry and repeatedly searches for some kind of food.  He finds some oatmeal cooking on the fire.

He thrust his head deep into the kettle and howled with pain as his nose met the boiling porridge. He threw back his head, but in doing so jerked the kettle off the hook, and when he turned, he was wearing it over his head like a black pumpkin. (Ch. 1)

The comparison here is between the kettle and a pumpkin.  I am not sure how often people wear pumpkins on their heads, but apparently to Lyddie the bear with the kettle on his head resembles a person wearing a black pumpkin on his head.

The next simile is actually from a Bible verse.  In this one, Lyddie’s mother compares the bear to the devil by quoting a verse comparing the devil to a lion.

'Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” (Ch. 1)

Lyddie points out that the bear was just a bear, but her mother takes it as a sign.  Ever since Lyddie’s youngest sister was born and her father left to go out west to find his fortune, Lyddie’s mother has not been right.  She uses the bear as an excuse to leave the farm and go stay with her sister, Aunt Clarissa.

Lyddie likes similes.  When she goes to sell her calf to her Quaker neighbor, she is impressed by how much better off they seem to be than her family.

Envy crept up like a noxious vine. Lyddie snapped it off, but the roots were deep and beyond her reach. (Ch. 2)

Lyddie compares the envy she feels to a vine because it seems to grow as she looks around the farm and sees how prosperous the Stevens family has been while her family has suffered.  Lyddie does not want to give up her farm, but at this point she has nothing left.  She has been sold off to work at the tavern.

One of the best similes is the description of the tavern the first time Lyddie sees it.

Addition after addition, porch, shed, and a couple of barns, the end one at least four stories high. The whole complex, recently painted with a mix of red ochre and buttermilk, stood against the sky like a row of giant beets popped clear of the earth. (Ch. 3)

Lyddie compares the bright, freshly painted red buildings to new beets.  This demonstrates how impressed she is with the place, but also how intimidating it is.  It symbolizes her desire to remain on the farm rather than work at the tavern, where she feels she is being enslaved.