Winter Barn

A dilapidated old barn shelters a wide variety of animals, including snakes, porcupines, cats, and a skunk, during the sub-zero winter temperature of Maine, while they wait for the first signs of spring.

Grade 1-4 Parnall reveals what winters with weeks of 30 degrees below zero temperatures mean for the creatures (insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals) that seek sanctuary in an old wooden barn. The text describes the ingenious means of survival devised by more than a dozen cohabitors of this creaky, leaky old building. The double-page charcoal drawings capture the chill as Parnall skillfully manipulates large white spaces. He's able to suggest volumes with hints of black charcoal strokes. His treatment of landforms are most powerful because he seems freer to abstract from nature. His porcupine, cats, sheep, and other creatures are naturalistic and appealing. However, his very limited use of washes of color seem more like tentative samples than necessary integrations into the graphic concept, and tend to distract from and diminish the power of Parnall's black-and-white draughtsmanship.Kenneth Marantz, Art Education Department, Ohio State Univ . , Columbus
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Like a great woolly mammoth frozen in the Arctic ice, the winter barn waits." Inside the 200-year-old barn we find not only farm animals, but also wildlife waiting for spring: a ribbon snake, red ants, white-footed mice, porcupines and a skunk. All listen as the "barn sings its own songs about winter, summer, and the lives held safe within the great dark cloak of hand-hewn wood." The text is sometimes difficult, but the tranquil words beautifully evoke ancient cycles and mysteries. The detailed pictures, some of Parnall's best, are startling. Like Annie Dillard's essays, they train the reader's eye: the end of a beam dazzles like the sun, a dog's nose and a single eye peer into the haven of sleeping woodchucks, and mice burrow in grass-filled mazes between the stones.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.