The Children Who Lived In A Barn by Eleanor Graham

The Children Who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So the basic premise of The Children Who Lived In A Barn, a book that appealed to me precisely because of that outstanding “does exactly what it says on the tin” title and a charming wraparound cover, is “the parents disappear for plot reasons and the kids are made homeless but then go off to live in a barn that the farmer’s offered them and everyone’s cool about that” and that’s a lot. I’ve read an enormous amount of children’s books from this period and earlier and I’ve seen some stuff, she says, staring into the infinite distance, that you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. And yet here I am, reading this book where the parents are all “we’ve got to go off now, our planet needs us” and the kids are all “cool, we’ll just chill out for a bit and wait for you to come back” and half of the villagers are deeply anti-authority, up the revolution, come hide in my barn for a bit, it’s all good, kind of all proved a little too much for me to cope with.

And yet, even though I could not remotely deal with the premise of this book, it’s charmingly put together and deeply evocative of both time and place. Graham’s writing is infinitely sweet stuff that, even though I found myself screaming “and everybody’s cool with these kids in the actual barn??”, I still found myself enjoying it. It’s otherworldly, forgotten stuff. The children are taught how to cook in a haybox (epic stuff which young readers could easily replicate) and the whole vibe is just one of deep, utter adventure. Even though it’s on mad, ridiculous circumstances. Even though the farmer’s like “live in my barn but don’t tell the Mrs”. Even though the villagers are all “we hate you but we hate authority more here’s some bacon”. Even though the ONLY normal person in this entire shindig who sticks up for the children at a particular point of crisis goes “well, they’re doing good” and completely ignores the fact that they are in a barn and winter is an actual coming thing and how is anybody remotely fine with any of this??

Honestly, fun stuff, adventuresome stuff, but! but!

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