A review by cmw119
The Hundred-Year Barn by Patricia MacLachlan
2.0
Guys, I'm just never going to like Patricia MacLachlan. It's nothing against her personally. There are plenty of people who want to go back to the 1800s/early-1900s and live on the Prairie. I'm not one of them.
This book was one of our Picture Book Children's Choice Awards books for 2020, and I'm just not feeling it.
What I will say for MacLachlan is she always puts an emphasis on family, which is fun to teach. Plus I got a STEM activity out of this one as well, getting the kids to build their own barn, and then challenging them to try to knock it down (a-la the Three Little Pigs) to see if they could build something that might stand for 100 years.
It was neat to see watercolors used for the illustrations, however, going back to prairie life, everything is just so... beige and tan. I think that was probably done to make the red barn really stand out, but it just reinforces what I think about the 1800s/early-1900s prairie... boring and not much to see here.
This book was one of our Picture Book Children's Choice Awards books for 2020, and I'm just not feeling it.
What I will say for MacLachlan is she always puts an emphasis on family, which is fun to teach. Plus I got a STEM activity out of this one as well, getting the kids to build their own barn, and then challenging them to try to knock it down (a-la the Three Little Pigs) to see if they could build something that might stand for 100 years.
It was neat to see watercolors used for the illustrations, however, going back to prairie life, everything is just so... beige and tan. I think that was probably done to make the red barn really stand out, but it just reinforces what I think about the 1800s/early-1900s prairie... boring and not much to see here.