Author-illustrator Sophie Blackall captures an imagined large farm family’s journey through the years in Farmhouse (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022). Her text tells about the things the family does in the house and her detailed collage illustrations go from room to room illustrating the large and loving family growing up in the house.
We see the children age as the book progresses from room to room, and in the end, the farmhouse is abandoned as people move out. Then the house is rediscovered by a illustrator….who is Blackall herself, creating this family from the remnants and remains she saw at a very real abandoned farmhouse.
The illustrations become even more captivating when you learn that the materials used in the collages came from that very real farmhouse: fabric, newspaper clippings, and so forth. She also made the interior of the house’s rooms on one very large canvas for a few of the spreads. It is truly amazing to see the entire canvas but also to examine the abundance of details in each two-page spread collage illustration. I adore the picture book Farmhouse. I think it should have won the Caldecott medal for 2023.
