Sarah, Plain and Tall: 1986 Newbery Award Winner

In March of 2014, I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause

Sarah Elizabeth Wheaton: Plain and tall

Anna and Caleb Witting live a lonely life on the prairie, and have ever since their mother died the day after Caleb was born.  Their father, Jacob, us to be happy, but now he's just as lonely as they are.  So when he places an ad for a bride and a mother in the newspapers back East, they want to know who will answer.  Sarah Wheaton, a plain and tall woman from Maine, answers them.  She soon comes for a month-long visit with her cat, Seal, and the family learns just what a wonderful woman she is.  But will she stay?

This short novella, Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, was perhaps the very first Newbery Award book I ever read.  I loved it then and even recall seeing the movie one day in class.  I loved it again as I read it under the maple tree in the front yard of my apartment building.  It is a touching story about loss.  Anna and Caleb have lost their mother, and fear losing Sarah if she doesn't like living on the prairie.  Sarah misses her brother and the sea, as she lived on the coast of Maine.  But their is also love, and warmth and growth. The story is very short, but the story is sweet and very touching.  

Like Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, this story touches on the lives of those living on the prairie in the 19th century.  It doesn't sugarcoat the hardships, as there is a death mentioned in the first few pages of the story and a severe storm that comes through the farm.  But there is also strength in its pages, as Sarah and the children learn and grow together.  The story is a great piece of historical fiction and a fast read.

A love that lasted

Chuck was going off to fight in the China Burma theater in the war. Betty was his sweetheart who was staying at home.  He was 25.  She was 21.

The year was 1943.  The date was the 27th of November.  The place was a small Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh.

Over 68 years have passed since that day, the event that created a family, that brought together a couple to whom my father would be born twelve years later.  Theirs was a sweet love that would stand the test of time.

It was a short and sweet ceremony, and they had a small reception, but their love was big and it kept them together through their time of separation.  

They would have four children, though one would quietly pass away before she was 21 years of age.  The other three would go on to marry and have children of their own.

 They would retire and move from Pittsburgh to the warmer climates of Florida.  From here they would travel around the United Sates, visiting their children.  Their youngest son was in the Marine Corps, and they loved to visit him wherever he was stationed when they could.

They would honor the wedding vows they made that day.  They would remain together until Chuck's death in 1989. They were married for forty-six years.