Barn (rlb)

Avi

ISBN 10: 0531087115 ISBN 13: 9780531087114

Publisher: Scholastic, 1994

Synopsis

Nine-year-old Ben, living in the Oregon Territory in 1855, is called home from school to help on the family farm after his father is paralyzed and becomes convinced that his father's recovery depends on the building of a new barn.

About this title

About the Author

Avi's work spans nearly every genre and has received nearly every major prize, including the 2003 Newbery Medal for Crispin: The Cross of Lead. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-8. Rooted in a one-room family cabin in Oregon Territory in the 1850s, this is a classic survival story of kids who suddenly find themselves on their own without adults to care for them.

The terror is there from the first line: "Your father has met with an accident," nine-year-old Ben is told at boarding school. He must go home to help his 13-year-old brother, Harrison, and 15-year-old sister, Nettie. Mother died the year before of diphtheria; another brother died on the trail coming west. Now Ben, Harrison, and Nettie stand uncertainly in front of the cabin: "We hardly knew what or how to be." Not only must they farm the family claim and bring in the crop, but they must also care for their father, who is paralyzed. He's as helpless as a baby, unable to speak or move his body or control his bowels.

At first Ben is "mortified" at having to feed and clean his father. But then it becomes routine. In fact, "his filth proved that Father still lived. . . . In this way did I begin to learn how heaven and earth do mingle."

Ben's spare, first-person narrative tells of the special relationship he had with his father--their own "private mischief." Now, his father can't talk to him. In a chapter of almost unbearable intensity, Ben does finally get his silent father to communicate. Ben asks a question and screams in anger, "If you mean yes, you must close your eyes!" And then, his father does close his eyes. Is it an accident? Or does he mean yes?

The question Ben asked was whether Father wanted his children to build the barn he had been hoping to build himself. Ben persuades Harrison and Nettie that they must build it to give Father a reason to live and that they must build it alone, without the help of neighbors, as a gift to their father. Nettie tries to make Ben see that Father is dying anyway, but Ben denies it. With Father propped up in a barrow, they mark the site, fell the trees. They use the oxen to haul the logs, then they cut, strip, and split them. While Father wastes away, they pile rocks for the foundation, and raise the walls and roof. When the barn is finally done, it is "nothing much to look at and probably not truly square," yet it holds them there. And Father is dead. Did Ben build the barn for Father? Did Father get Ben to build it?

That yoking of opposites is in every scene, almost in every sentence, of this plainspoken novel. The name Ben means "son of." The story shows that the child is father of the man; that dying and building are one cycle; that silence can be eloquent language. Nothing is certain. Every statement opens out, even the Lord's Prayer: "Our father" is dead, and he's in heaven, and he's in the barn. Heaven and earth do mingle.

The characters have the same complexity. Ben is very smart--that's why he was the one sent to school--yet he hates being special, and he envies his brother's size and strength. Through Ben's memories, the character of his beloved father emerges as far from perfect. Father never quite built a home; he said he never had much "luck," moving his family from Vermont to Illinois to Missouri before coming to Oregon. Father didn't build the barn himself. It's ironic that he now helps Ben find the self-reliance to do it for them both.

The writing is understated, almost monosyllabic, with a casual tone and concrete imagery reminiscent of the poetry of Robert Frost. It's interesting that the most detailed part of the story is the mechanics of the barn building. Work, especially manual work, is getting more attention in children's books. Here Avi particularizes the struggle to make a place that is home.

Avi is one of our most versatile and prolific children's writers. He never does the same thing twice, always experimenting with form and theme and setting, from thriller and realistic fiction to radio play and graphic novel. This small, beautiful historical novel has a timeless simplicity. It's the best thing he's done. Like MacLachlan's Sarah, Plain and Tall (1985), the story reaches from home to the universe. Hazel Rochman

About this edition

• Publisher: Scholastic
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0531087115
• ISBN 13: 9780531087114
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 106