Sarah, Plain and Tall

October is Family History Month, celebrated by genealogists and family historians who believe in actively searching for information about ancestors. Because of my own family research, I have stood on the Gettysburg battlefield and imagined what my great-grandfather experienced there. I now think about the streets of New York City in an entirely different way—because I know my ancestors, commemorated on some of those street signs, founded and settled New Amsterdam. For children’s book writers, one reason to get a handle on your family history comes from the stories you will find. Our book of the day by Patricia MacLachlan, Sarah, Plain and Tall, began as a story passed down in her family.

Patty MacLachlan had already written many books for children when she crafted this masterpiece for seven- to nine-year-olds. After taking her family to North Dakota to show them the farm where her father was born in a humble sod house, she was inspired to preserve his history. To do this she turned to a family story that her mother had often told about a mail-order bride who went to live on the Plains.

Anna, a young girl, narrates the story set in the nineteenth century about her father, Jacob Witting, a widowed farmer. He places a newspaper ad to entice a wife to come to his prairie home and become a mother for his children. After they exchange a series of letters, Sarah Wheaton leaves Maine to visit Jacob and his family. The tension in the story comes from the children, Anna and her brother Caleb—who grow to love Sarah and long for her to love them in return and stay, rather than go back to Maine. In a spare, economical style, the novel of a mere fifty-eight pages explores the feelings of the children and Sarah’s developing love for all members of the group. Sarah, Plain and Tall celebrates family life and how a cohesive unit can be formed by those not related by blood.

MacLachlan wrote two other books about these characters, Caleb’s Story and Skylark. All were adapted for Hallmark television specials featuring Glenn Close. The book has become a staple of second and third grade classrooms across the country. Now a quarter of a century after its publication, this beautiful story and its evocative language has become part of the literary heritage of American children: “I will come by train. I will wear a yellow bonnet. I am plain and tall. Tell them I sing.”

Here’s a passage from Sarah, Plain and Tall: