Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan

MacLachlan's thoughts often ran toward family and place, the two elements at the core of her most famous book, 'Sarah, Plain and Tall.' The volume received the Newbery Medal, the highest award in children's literature, and has sold more than 7 million copies since it first appeared in 1985, according to the publishing house HarperCollins. You write to find out what you're thinking about, to find out how you feel.' 'Among some writers there's this ghastly notion that one has to teach children lessons,' she once told the Orange County Register. She deplored children's books of the moralizing kind, those sledgehammers of literature wielded by grown-ups determined to pound ideas into young minds.

MacLachlan wrote more than 60 children's books during her half-century career, which she began in her mid-30s after her own children started school, leaving her time in the day to collect her memories and observations and turn them into stories. Her son John MacLachlan confirmed her death but did not cite a cause.

Olivia’s next book - The Truth About White Lies - is out in March of 2022.Patricia MacLachlan, an award-winning writer known to millions of young readers as the author of 'Sarah, Plain and Tall,' a novel about two motherless farm children and the gentle woman who comes to the prairie to make them whole, died March 31 at her home in Williamsburg, Mass. Times, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Gay Mag, and others. Her essays have been published at Bitch Media, Real Simple, The L.A.

She is the author of the new adult series Panther in the Hive and a young adult series, which includes A Conspiracy of Stars and An Anatomy of Beasts. Olivia Cole is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. And while it’s the shortest book that Alli has ever covered on SSR, it inspires no shortage of thoughtful conversation! Tune in to Episode 146 for conversations about historical revisionism, whiteness, erasure, beautiful writing, literary scapegoating, the complexities of memory, the dynamics of choice, mail order brides in the American West, Accelerated Reader, and more. Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall was published in 1985 and went on to win the Newbery Medal, the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and the Golden Kite Award in 1986.

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan