Farmhouse

In rhythmic, lightly rhyming verse and densely textured multimedia spreads whose collaged layers mimic the strata of stories built up over generations, two-time Caldecott Medalist Blackall relays the history of a white clapboard farmhouse "where twelve children/ were born and raised,/ where they learned to crawl,/ in the short front hall." Gently affectionate lines and impish portraits of the siblings, who read as white, imagine their young lives in mischief, play, and work as they "whispered secrets,/ played truth or dare,/ and lost their teeth/ and brushed their hair." Cleverly rendered cutaway images, meanwhile, hint visually at adjoining rooms while centering myriad objects: rag rugs, prize ribbons, "a button/ that was once a shell in the sea," and more. After the last family member eventually departs, and the house falls into decay ("the parlor organ that rattled with nuts,/ put there by a squirrel with rather a fuss"), a turn toward authorial self-insertion pushes the once unsalvageable "falling-down house" into the here and now. The tale's strong sense of place undergirds Blackall's witness to the way environments change over time and stories survive long after material objects disappear, in a thoughtful, expertly executed work that looks simultaneously forward and back. An author's note details the story behind the Upstate New York farmhouse. Ages 4-8. Agent: Nancy Gallt, Gallt & Zacker Literary. (Sept.)

PreS-Gr 3--For most readers, a life in tune with the rhythms of nature on a family farm in the countryside is remote prospect; Blackall's gorgeous book changes that, by transporting children back to life in the 19th century on a dairy farm, where a family with 12 children lives in a white clapboard house. The detailed illustrated spreads show daily scenes at home and on the farm; some of these interiors are reminiscent of Grant Wood's painting "Dinner for Threshers," whereby one outside wall of the farmhouse has been removed offering a glimpse of the interior lives of the family. There is the wood stove in the kitchen, an upright piano in the parlor, quilts in the bedrooms, and homemade wallpaper. The text is one long, poetic sentence that wanders from misbehaving children to contented cows to nighttime dreams to the eventual abandonment of the farm and its reclamation by nature. Blackall has drawn inspiration for the book from an actual house in upstate New York and has begun all her augmented collage illustrations by using fragments of found objects from the farmhouse, including wallpaper, handmade dresses, and catalog advertisements. VERDICT A love letter to the joys of country living and family life as well as the importance of treasuring the past and all its stories.--Sally A. James