BARN

In a first-person narration that reads like a voice-over, a New England barn tells its own story through the centuries. It recounts its raising in Revolutionary times and its years as a calm center of farm life, ``with an east wind off the Atlantic blowing through my two big doors.'' In more recent times, the barn was a home to Depression-era homeless, was gussied up and turned into an antique store, and became the site of a '60s peace rally. Destroyed by a fire (something about ``squirrels and old electrical wires''), the barn is rebuilt and restored to shelter horses. Although the conceit of the barn narrating wears thin at times, the richly atmospheric folk-art paintings of the barn and its changing world are never less than compelling. As the barn says of its most recent incarnation, ``It is some lovely.'' (Picture book. 5-8)