Includes Sarah Plain and Tall, Skylark, and Caleb's Story.

This book is about a family that lost their mother the day after her son, Caleb was born. Anna, Caleb, and Papa await the arrival of Sarah, whom replied to an ad about a wife. Sarah is from Maine and misses the sea everyday. Caleb and Anna become very attached to Sarah an independent woman that wants to learn life on the farm and to go into town by herself and the children fear that she misses the sea to much that she will not come back but she does and there will be a wedding.

I liked the story and I could remember reading it in the past. I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed it now. It is the type of story that gives hope when you expect something might happen bad and you do not want it to and it turns out to happen just the way you want it to.

Extension ideas are to discuss to visit a farm or a sea to have the children see what goes on at the farm or at the sea. have the children read more books by Patricia MacLachlan. Discuss differences in the book with the families.

Sarah, Plain and Tall is a story about a little girl named Anna, her little brother Caleb, and their father who lived on the prairie a long time ago. Their mother passes away the day after she gives birth to Caleb so Caleb did not know her very well and Anna misses her terribly. They are both in need of a woman to help aleviate that longing for their mother. After a few years pass, their father sends for a mail order bride from the east coast.

This story is not a story that I can relate to personally. I have always had both of my parents and fortunately have never experienced a loss so close to me. I can see though how this book could help many other children who have lost a parent and gain a stepfather or mother.

For a classroom extension, I would have students choose two characters to compare and contrast. They would list all of their similarities on one side of the page then list their differences on the other. The other idea would be for them to decide which character they related to and have them write about it. ( )

I listened to this audiobook version read by Glenn Close. I enjoyed her efforts to give every character a different voice, although the young Caleb’s was a little too screechy for my taste. The audiobook also had two of the sequels to "Sarah, Plain and Tall," "Skylark" (1993), and "Caleb’s Story" (2001).

In "Caleb’s Story," there are references to World War I (1914-1918) and the influenza epidemic (1918-1919), therefore it is set in 1918. His younger sister Cassie is four years old in that book, therefore "Skylark" (which ends with Sarah pregnant with Cassie) is set around 1913. At least a whole year has passed between "Skylark" and "Sarah, Plain and Tall," so the latter is set sometime around 1910-1912. Maclachlan was born in 1938, so it is likely that her mother, for whom she wrote the book, and who was also born on the prairie, would have been a young girl around the same time. (MacLachlan was born in Wyoming, and her father in North Dakota in a sod house).

In her Newbery acceptance speech, MacLachlan said that at the time she wrote the book, her mother was beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s. MacLachlan said she “wished to write my mother’s story…and hand this small piece of my mother’s past to her in a package as perfect as Anna’s sea stone, as Sarah’s sea. But books, like children, grow and change, borrowing bits and pieces of the lives of others to help make them who and what they are. And in the end we are all there, my mother, my father, my husband, my children, and me. We gave my mother better than a piece of her past. We gave her the same that Anna and Caleb and Sarah and Jacob received – a family.”

This is a Newbery winner that is more accessible to children than many others. It’s only 55 pages and written at a 3rd-4th grade reading level. Older children might find it too easy or lacking in action (particularly boys). As an adult, I too loved the plain language, Anna’s honest feelings about the birth of Caleb, and the comparisons, implied and stated, of the prairie to the sea. This would be a good book for children dealing with a new stepparent or having to move.

My favorite line on the book is from chapter 7, page 43, when Sarah says, “There is always something to miss, no matter where you are.” As someone who spent 21 years away from my home state and missed it, and who is now back in that home state and misses aspects of my 21-year home, this, like so much of the book, rang true. ( )