by Moe Zilla

Created on: April 04, 2010

Jane Yolen starts with powerful stories.  She won a Caldecott medal for her book, Owl Moon, based on her memories of owl-watching as a child. And she mined an even more powerful memory for "All Those Secrets of the World." ("My cousin Michael was five and I was four when my father went off to war.") But "Raising Yoder's Barn" tells a story which is even simpler, and even more stark - the story of a barn burning in an Amish community, and the community coming together to build a new one.

In an author's note at the back of the book, Yolen describes the Amish as "a particular religious group who live in yesterday" - but they're lovingly illustrated by Bernie Fuchs. The title page has a gorgeous illustration showing golden sunshine coloring just the top of a dark forest - lighting the street's asphalt with orange, as an old-fashioned buggy rolls by, drawn by a horse. Fuchs' rich paintings add a warmth to the story of the simple people. While Yolen describes brothers swinging scythes to cut mustard plants, Fuchs draws the field as a lush yellow background, while sunlight brightens the young boys.

The field's furrows are "straight as a good man's life," Yolen writes, and she tries hard to recreate the life of the Amish.  In an author's note at the back of the book, Yolen explains that she based the story on her weekend visits to Pennsylvania's Amish country with her husband. "I knew that either we would live there someday or else I would write about that landscape and those good people when I found the right story to tell." She tries to make her characters just as compelling as the tragedy that befalls them.

The young boy narrating is proud to finally be working beside his older brothers in the field. But a spectacular bolt of lightning strikes their barn that night - "like a swooping hawk" - dwarfing the humble building through an enormous grey sky. "Papa liked to call that windmill 'God's own right hand,'" the boys says, since it was their only source of power for the feed grinder and corn sheller. And the smoke rises so high, he believes he could climb them to heaven.

But a farm's not a farm without a barn for its hay - and for cows, goats, hens, and chickens, and "tools in their proper order." It's a green, sunny Friday when the new barn starts rising, under the guidance of Samuel Stulzfoot - "a minute of a man." And Fuch's saves his best painting for their moment of triumph, as "sixty feet by forty feet, to the sound of many hammers ringing, that barn grew like a giant flower in the field all in a single day." And the barn was finished before sunset.

It's a simple story, which is made more moving by the inclusion of one crucial detail. When the barn is finally raised, the young boy proudly spots its row of tools, now hung again in their proper places. And the new barn includes a spot for his scythe - which is ready for new labors this summer. The narrator thinks with pride that "it would fit comfortably into the palms of my good hands."

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