Parents' Guide to

Farmhouse

By Regan McMahon, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 4+

Amazing look at a family's home and life through time.

Book Sophie Blackall Picture Book 2022
cover of Farmhouse book

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

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What's the Story?

FARMHOUSE follows one large family -- of 12 kids! -- growing up in a big house on a farm. The daily details of life, like marking kids' heights on a door jam in pencil, helping out with chores on the family farm, getting in trouble, telling secrets, reading books, losing teeth, getting sick, dreaming of their futures, are chronicled in the art and the breezy, rhyming text. The house itself is a character, aging and slumping and ultimately returning to nature.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This exceptional book is a buoyant mediation on a family growing through time and a house that brims with life and then falls into disrepair and critter invasion after they're gone. Farmhouse is a fantastic read-aloud, with an easy-going rhythm and rhyme that keeps the story bouncing along in one continuous poem peppered with tiny moments of day-to-day life with children.

Sophie Blackall's wonderful art sometimes offers a cross-section look at multiple stories of the house at once. The kids are drawn with distinctive personalities and emotional states, showing squabbles and joys, chores and play, from infancy to gray-haired old age. And it's fascinating to see what becomes of the house after the people move out. Back matter shows photos of the actual house that Blackall saw in that state, which inspired this outstanding book. End papers display a variety of scavenged scraps and items.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about how Farmhouse traces the lives of the kids growing up in a big family. Draw a picture showing your family at different stages. Do you look different from how you looked as a baby? How about how you looked last year as compared with this year?

  • This story is told in rhyme. Do you prefer stories where the lines rhyme or not? Which kind is more fun to listen to or to read aloud?

  • If someone looked inside the place where you live, what stories could they tell about your family? What items would give clues to who lives there, how old they are, and what they like to do?

Book Details

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