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A Children’s Book We Can All Learn From: Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall

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The old farmhouse that my wife grew up in has been in her family since the Civil War. It’s seeped in memories and nostalgia as generations of large families have been raised there, making it the witness of the countless joys, sorrows, failures, and achievements that go along with growing up. When we visit there, I can almost feel the happy memories echoing through the old rooms.

My experience with my wife’s house immediately helped me understand the meaningfulness and importance of a children’s book called Farmhouse by two-time Caldecott medalist Sophie Blackall. Farmhouse is an exquisite children’s picture book that celebrates family, home, memory, and the beauty of the ordinary. Children and adults will not only delight in its artistic and literary quality but may also experience it as an invitation to consider what it is to build a home and a family.

In a note at the back of the book, Blackall explains the inspiration for the work:

I have always loved old things. Especially old, worn, mended things that show traces of hands and hearts and minds long gone, things that tell stories. … Imagine my excitement, then, to buy an old farm that came with a falling-down house where twelve children were born and raised.

Blackall explored the house—which, as the haunt of various birds and animals, was beyond repair—and gathered fragments and oddments to help her imagine the life of the family that lived there. She also interviewed descendants of the house’s occupants, allowing her to build up a collection of stories and scrapbooks to frame and inspire her book.

Though brief and simple, the book feels like the product of intentional study and reflection. There are layers to it—not least because Blackall intentionally incorporated a layered approach in her artwork for the book. Here’s how she describes it:

The pictures in this book are made of layers. I began with the reverse side of a roll of wallpaper and added floors and walls and furniture, made from scraps and fragments I found in the house. Most of the first layers are invisible now … in the way that stories become layered as they get told and retold over the years. Stories about everything and nothing much.

Blackall’s research and her patchwork art style create a rich reading experience. The text and pictures of the book depict the family’s children growing up, living daily life, and performing simple yet significant activities: learning to crawl, painting the walls (and the cat), getting scolded and forgiven, getting sick, reading and dreaming, losing teeth and collecting toy cars, milking the cows, and fishing for trout in the stream.

Nothing “noteworthy” happens in the book, apart from the noteworthiness of all the little things that make up a human life. To say it another way, everything in the book is noteworthy. Most of our lives, after all, are made up of little, everyday things—especially when we are children. The value of these seemingly inconsequential experiences is intensified in retrospect. When we reflect on memory, we begin to see that the little threads of daily occurrences, which pass through our hands almost unnoticed, combine into a beautiful tapestry when viewed from a distance. It’s the tapestry of life. We might even call it “the poetry of the everyday.”

Not only the theme but also the words of the book are poetic. Here’s how the book begins:

Over a hill, at the end of a road, by a glittering stream that twists and turns, stands a house where twelve children were born and raised, where they learned to crawl in the short front hall, where they posed, arranged on the wooden stairs, and were measured with marks over the years.

Most of us can relate to these images and experiences, and they may conjure up thoughts of our own childhood homes. The simplicity of the language reflects the simplicity of the children’s upbringing, which is no less meaningful for being simple.

Here’s another description:

One day, the youngest child, who was now quite old, took a last look around and picked up her case and opened the door and stepped outside and into a car, where her sister was waiting, to drive to the sea, which they always, always wanted to see.

The trickle of words rolls on, until suddenly the characters are old. This, too, is like the mystery of time in real life, which feels slow in the moment until suddenly it is behind you. As Virgil wrote, “Time speeds away irretrievably.” Before you know it, it is gone.

In the book, the old farmhouse is eventually left behind: quiet, empty, and slowly falling into disrepair. It’s reminiscent of the rural roads of America, where so many farmhouses exist only as broken skeletons of rural family life. As Blackall writes in her author’s note, “There were houses just like it collapsing across the countryside, as small dairy farms sold their cows and gave up fighting to survive in a changing world.”

This is one of the bitter fruits of big agricultural business, which has decimated small family farms and rural culture, as Wendell Berry has explained eloquently in The Unsettling of America.

But the memories and the stories of these family farms remain, and Blackall has done us all a great service by immortalizing them in this simple but profound children’s book.

Image credit: Pexels