I strongly recommend this book to the fans of Patricia Maclachian ( )

This book is the sequel to Sarah, Plain and Tall. Sarah and Jacob were wed and lived happily with Anna and Caleb. Everything is going great until they enter a drought. Neighbors are packing up and leaving, wells are running dry, and fires are starting everywhere. After Jacob’s well runs dry, he sends Sarah and the kids to Maine. They live there with Sarah’s family while Jacob stayed to rebuild their burned down barn and to wait for the rain. Anna and Caleb liked to ocean but they missed their home and father terribly. They thought of how Sarah must have felt when she moved across the country for them. They wait and wait and finally one day they see their father looking out over the ocean. They run to him and he tells them that it has finally rained. The children were excited but worried that Sarah will want to stay there and not return home with them. Sarah, Anna, Caleb, and Jacob all return home and Sarah with good news.

They are a close family and it seems like nothing can pull them apart. My family is also very close. Of course, we have had some rough times but in the end everything has turned out wonderful. I know that no matter what I will always have my family’s back and they will always have mine.

I would do this unit along with the one from Sarah, Plain and Tall. The children would learn about the pioneer days and about the droughts. They would learn the definition of drought and what a lot of families did back in the pioneer days; the days when they were going through a drought. Then the children would come up with their own ideas for what they would have done if they had lived in those days. An additional activity would be to have the children use a map to find out how far Maine is from their home. On the last day of this unit, the students would come to class dressed up in clothes from the pioneer days.

This is the sequel to Sarah, Plain and Tall. Like many sequels, it does not live up to the first book in the series. ( )