# Sarah, Plain and Tall

**Author:** Patricia MacLachlan
**Lexile:** 660L
**Grade range:** Grades 3–5
**Age range:** 8–11
**First published:** 1985
**Page count:** 58
**Genre:** Historical Fiction (Middle Grade)
**ISBN-13:** `9780064402057`
**ISBN-10:** `006440205X`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/sarah-plain-and-tall
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Two children on a prairie farm in the 1890s anxiously wait to meet Sarah, the woman who has answered their widowed father's newspaper ad for a wife. MacLachlan's Newbery Medal novella is a near-universal 3rd-5th grade assignment and Common Core Appendix B exemplar.

## Themes

- family
- loss
- new beginnings
- prairie life

## Content notes

- references to a parent's death

Common Sense Media age recommendation: 7+

## Where this book is assigned

### Common Core State Standards (ELA)

- **required** · 3rd grade — [source: CCSS ELA Appendix B, grades 2-3 Newbery exemplar](https://achievethecore.org/page/2699)
- **required** · 4th grade — [source: CCSS ELA Appendix B, grades 4-5 exemplar](https://achievethecore.org/page/2699)
- **required** · 4th grade · Kansas — [source: Kansas DOE — prairie-state canon requirement](https://www.ksde.org/)

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