Displaying 1 of 1 2022 Format: Book Author: Blackall, Sophie, author, illustrator. Title: Farmhouse / Sophie Blackall. Edition: First edition. Publisher, Date: New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2022. Description: 1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 27 cm Summary: A farmhouse provides the setting for a dozen children to live and grow, and when they leave, another family arrives to fill the house with love again. Target Audience Note: Ages 4-8. Little, Brown and Company. Subjects: Dwellings -- Juvenile fiction. Farm life -- Juvenile fiction. Families -- Juvenile fiction. LCCN: 2021030777 ISBN: 9780316528948 (hardcover) 0316528943 (hardcover) OCLC: 1260168735 System Availability: 7 # System items in: 6 # Local items: 1 # Local items in: 1 Current Holds: 0 Place Request Add to My List Expand All | Collapse All Availability Large Cover Image Trade Reviews Publishers Weekly ReviewIn 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.) Librarian's View Displaying 1 of 1
