179. Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Sophie Blackall. 2022. [September] 48 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: 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,
where they carved potatoes
and dipped them in paint
to pattern the walls
with flowers and leaves,
and painted the cat,
about which they lied,
for which they were scolded
and maybe they cried
and then were enfolded
in forgiving arms
in the serious room
(where the organ was played
and speeches were made),
but if they weren't
even sorry at all,
they were sent to their rooms,

Premise/plot: Is Farmhouse the world's LONGEST run-on sentence???? Perhaps. I gave up on trying to find proper ending punctuation for my first sentence. (A question mark, a period, an exclamation point). The book was inspired by the author buying an OLD dilapidated farmhouse. She was thinking about the kinds of stories the house could tell about its former inhabitants. 

My thoughts: I may not love the run-on sentence. [It might be slightly above my maturity level]. But, I enjoyed thinking about this one. The illustrations are super-detailed. There is a lot to unpack if you take the time to look closely at each spread of this picture book. The illustrations really do invite you in. [In my opinion.] The text had some lovely imagery. I'm just not sure why it had to be to be one long sentence. One does get the idea of the house being lived in. But when you break down the lines, to me at least, it got a bit messy.

I mentioned that the author bought property with an old farmhouse. The farmhouse could not be salvaged (saved, rescued) but the stories--informed both by descendants of the original owners, photos, and scrapbooks AND the author's imagination--could be.

 

© 2022 Becky Laney of Young Readers