THE BIG RED BARN

A tenuous construct, barely a story, with none of the usual aids or lures for a beginning reader. The first-person narrator sets up the situation in disconnected offhand remarks about the family's beloved big red barn; sister Susie's pet goat, a rooster, a barn owl, and a nest of kangaroo rats (denizens of the barn); his new, resented stepmother and "the hayloft where I went when Mom died." Then, without warning, the barn burns down—and the question becomes whether its shiny aluminum replacement can actually take the old barn's place. The narrator resists; but, says wise Grandpa, "The new barn has to make its own place. It will if we give it a chance." That's a sidelong reference to stepmother Emma, seen in affectionate consort with Susie on the page before (and in the picture opposite); but the inference is both too fragile and too facile to make this diffuse mood-piece into a satisfactory story—even if it weren't an easy reader.