Farmhouse: Stories brought to Life
Review by Dr. Jerry Flack
Sophie Blackall has a rare visual talent for bringing old stories to life for contemporary readers in her remarkable history-oriented picture books. She is a double winner of the American Library Association’s Caldecott Medal that is awarded to the illustrator of the best picture book published in the United States by the American Library Association in the preceding year. Farmhouse could well be her third triumph. In 2016, Blackall won her first Caldecott Medal for her paintings in Lindsay Mattick’s family story, Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear (Little, Brown and Company, 2015). Blackall won a second Caldecott Medal in 2019 for Hello Lighthouse (Little, Brown and Company, 2018), which she both wrote and illustrated. Hello Lighthouse explores the history of brave lighthouse keepers and their resident families before they were replaced by modern-day technology.
Farmhouse explores a time in the distant past when a family of mother, father, and their 12 children made a white clapboard farmhouse the center of their lives. In simple verse and inspired images, Blackall celebrates the plain yet loving lives of a large family on a real farm in upstate New York. Readers are given an enchanting tour of the joys and hard work of families when America was a more rural society. Exquisite colorful images packed with great detail and embellishments reveal the daily tasks, chores, education, and agricultural days of a farm family in a less frenzied time.
There were cows to be milked twice a day, barns to be cleaned, and hay to be cut and stored. There were apples to be picked and fresh fish to be caught from a nearby stream. The agrarian aspects of farm life nearly a century past are noted, but the busy activities of a robust family within the farm home receive the greatest attention.
In her Author’s Note, Blackall reveals that she now owns the property where the once-bustling farmhouse stood. She was able to preserve and renovate the family barn as an art studio, but the farmhouse was beyond saving. She was, however, able to tour the wobbly and fragile existing shell of the farm home before it was demolished. She writes of that search:
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.
Blackall was able to find scraps from vintage catalog pages, weather-damaged old books, dress patterns, long-faded photographs, cracked dishes, a squirrel-ravaged wooden pedal organ, bits and pieces of hand-made wallpaper, discarded spinning wheels, wicker baskets, broken barrels, and even a sodden bundle of two dozen moth-eaten dresses for girls and women. Many explorers would view such detritus as rubbish or junk. However, Blackall incorporates her found treasures in beautiful end paper collages. Moreover, from the damaged but real treasures she finds in the farmhouse she conjures up wonderful stories that are echoes across time and place.
Beautiful double-page spreads reveal the daily lives of a large family, generations past, as they went about age-appropriate farmhouse chores. As with many rural homes, the center of family activities took place in the busy farm kitchen with its black cast iron stove, the warmth of which provides an ideal resting place for the family cat. Children sweep and scrub floors, set tables for family meals, and peel apples for pies. At mealtime, father says a blessing. Older children dish up soup and break bread for younger siblings. The family of a dozen children is so large that two kitchen tables are a necessity. After meals, dishes need washing and drying. Socks have to be darned and buttons have to be sewn on shirts and blouses. Father brings in chopped wood to fire up the kitchen stove. A younger child bathes in a tin bathtub.
Life in the farmhouse is not only about chores, meals, and sleep. An older sister plays the wooden-pedal organ in the parlor while siblings play. One child is being scolded for lying about painting the family cat. The children read books, examine Sears “dream” catalogs, and complete homework. In multiple shared bedrooms, the children read about oceans and astronomy. Bedroom walls are covered with photographs, movie magazine portraits, children’s works of art, and blue ribbons won at the county fair for champion cattle. There are also family photographs, school pennants, and newspaper clippings. Bedrooms are also where sisters share secrets and brothers play with collections of tiny toy cars.
Blackall, Sophie. Farmhouse. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2022. New York Times Book Review and New York Pubic Library, 75th Anniversary Best Illustrated Children’s Book, 2022.
As the dozen farmhouse children grew to adulthood they moved away to colleges, became nurses and teachers, drove trucks, worked as farmers and veterinarians, and raised families of their own. Finally, the youngest of the 12 family children visited the falling-down farmhouse, packed a suitcase of personal treasures, and left the once lively farmhouse silent. However, once vacated by the large family, the farmhouse became housing for birds, raccoons, squirrels, and even one black bear who spent a long winter sleeping in the empty basement. The squirrels used the parlor organ as a cache for storing walnuts.
Sophie Blackall’s highly detailed illustrations appear more like a thematic collection of gallery paintings than pages in a book. Her paintings are done in layers. Her initial drawings were applied to the reverse (or back) side of wallpaper. She continued to add new layers of details using saved relics of the once lively and crowded family home. Her artistic renderings suggest verbal storytelling. Every new embellishment underscores family life in the farmhouse.
Perhaps the most unique feature of art images is Blackall’s use of perspective. The book format is horizontal. The once stately farmhouse was made up of four levels: a basement, main floor, second-story bedrooms, and a small, but crowded attic. The majority of the paintings include horizontal borders of the floors immediately above or below key rooms such as the family kitchen. These borders tease readers to imagine the activities being played out on all floors of the once-neat white clapboard farmhouse. A painting of the farmhouse kitchen at supper also reveals a preview of the second-story bedroom floors complete with rag rugs and beds made up for later hours. Long after the farmhouse has remained idle for decades and is becoming a ruin, the once grand family parlor is in disarray. A border layer of the stone basement reveals a black bear that slumbers throughout the winter months.
Excellent cutaway illustrations emphasize the dollhouse-like views of the interior rooms. In their glory days, every room of the farmhouse revealed children and parents at work, at play, and even at worship. Similar to Blackall’s Hello Lighthouse, Farmhouse tells the story of a single edifice across decades of time that echoes great stories. With each journey through its pages, Farmhouse readers can imagine many new tales.
Home and School Activities
Create a Character.
Sophie Blackall does not give the dozen children who were born and raised in the farm home first names. Only in her Author Notes does she reveal that the family name of mother, father, and children of all ages was Swantak. Urge readers to select one of the children of any age to feature in a verbal and artistic profile. Give one of the girls a first name (e.g., Effie). What activities does she perform in the rural family home? Was she the naughty child who daubed paint on the family cat and then lied about the act? Was she the movie fan who posted magazine photographs of Hollywood stars on bedroom walls? How might she have won the county fair ribbons that adorn bedroom walls? Were any of the relics Blackall found in the abandoned and falling-down family dwelling once her personal keepsakes (e.g., the tattered wedding dress)? Which position does she occupy in the formal family portrait? What were her childhood dreams and goals? Did she become a veterinarian, nurse, teacher or an astronomer? Did she marry and have a family of her own? Students can extend the story of any of the 12 children by asking similar questions and then writing and illustrating character sketches of their favorite childhood or adolescent characters.
What’s Missing?
The exact years of bustling life of the Swantak farm are not given, but gifted readers will note that in rooms such as the farm kitchen that many things found in their own homes are absent. There is not even a hand-cranked party-line phone on the kitchen wall nor a refrigerator. Electricity may not have been available. Gasoline lanterns provide post-supper lighting in the family kitchen. There certainly is not a micro-wave oven. There is no dishwasher nor even a battery-operated wall clock. Ask students to be observant. They can make two lists of key artifacts found in the Blackall’s farm kitchen and their own.
Side-by-Side Art.
Readers can create two poster-size paintings of past and present day images. Using any art media or style, suggest readers first create their own version of a colorful image of a special farmhouse room illustrated by Sophie Blackall. Perhaps young illustrators can portray the family parlor at a different time of day or night or on a special occasion. Next, using the list made in What’s Missing?, readers can draw or paint a similar size image that features many of the artifacts found in their own current kitchen or parlor/living room. The poster art results can be displayed side-by-side.
Historical Catalogs.
The age of the family dwelling found in Farmhouse suggests that many of the items that made a house a home may well have been ordered from catalogs, especially during the Great Depression and World War II eras. Libraries may have facsimile editions of century-old Sears catalogs. Pages from past home and farm catalogs can be found using Internet searches. One example is the 1942 Sears Christmas Book, Sears, Roebuck & Co. (Ben B. Judd, Jr. and Dover Publications, 2019). An 80-piece toy farm set sold for $1.49. Literary classics such as Dickens’ Christmas Stories sold for 49 cents. Many toys emphasized the war effort and customers could even purchase war bonds featured in the holiday catalog. Gift boxes for soldiers were both popular and patriotic. A family of 12 children had little income to support even basic toy purchases. The thrill may have been limited to just studying such a catalog of wonders. Children were more likely to receive a stocking with a fresh orange and nuts and hard candy. Once readers have studied facsimile catalogs, urge them to find a toy, book, or even perhaps a world globe for each one of the 12 children who once resided in the Farmhouse. Choose a catalog item that would benefit the entire family. Describe the family holiday gift and create a catalog-style drawing of the gift.
Potato Art.
Farmhouse unveils the creativity of children. A colorful spread shows how the children decorated blank walls. They cut new potatoes in half and engraved floral designs on the vegetable surfaces. Next, the children dipped their potato halves in varied colors of paint and made bright hallway designs. Encourage young designers to create similar original “wall papers.” Art materials include potatoes, poster paint, and several sheets of porous construction paper. Young artists are not limited to vegetable subjects. Perhaps they can carve astronomy images onto the surfaces of two or more potato halves. The finished artwork appears as the young illustrators apply paint to their original carvings and press their potato designs to one or more sheets of construction paper. Once their masterpieces are fully dried, they can be assembled into a makeshift wallpaper design samplers.
