Book Write Up # 3: Chapter Book #1

Author: Patricia MacLachlan

Title: Sarah, Plain and Tall

Genre: Chapter Book

Subgenre: Children's book

Theme: When tradgadie strikes, there is always hope.

Primary and seconday characters: Anna, Caleb, their dad, and Sarah.

Award and date of publication: Newberry Award Winner, published in 1985.

Publishing Company: A Charolotte Zolotow Book

This book opens with a young girl, Anna Witting, telling her younger brother Caleb the story of his birth. She always ends the story early, not wanting to discuss how their mother died the next day. They talk about their mother this time anyway, with Caleb fixating on their mother’s singing and wondering why their father, Jacob, doesn’t sing anymore. When he brings this up with Jacob, the man responds by saying he has put an ad in the paper for a wife and mother to come join the family on their farm, and has received an answer from a woman named Sarah in Maine. Sarah and the Witting family decide to give each other a one-month trial. Sarah experiences everyday life and a few adventures with the Wittings, but she also misses her family and the sea. Sarah leaves on a train to go visit her family. Caleb and Anna begin to worry: at the end of the month, will Sarah decide to leave? Sarah comes back and the children are so excited. She tells them she will always miss her old home but she will miss them more.

This book is a good book to read to students to teach them that when tragedies happen, there can still be a happy ending. In the end Caleb and Anna get the mother they lost.