This picture book about a contemporary Amish barn raising opens with lightning striking a barn roof on the title page, followed by a wordless double-page spread showing farm animals being shooed from the burning structure. A neighbor houses the livestock while “friends and neighbors helped Jacob’s father clear away the burned barn and lay the foundation for a new one.” The majority of the book is devoted to a one-day barn raising, with helpers arriving in horse-drawn buggies “even before the sun rose over the hills.” The men work steadily all day, building a barn on the new foundation, taking time off only for water breaks and a hearty chicken lunch, served by the women. By the end of an afternoon spent roofing and siding, the barn is finished, just as the sun sets. A concluding note shares additional details about barn raisings such as this one, based on the author’s experience in an Amish community in Iowa. (Ages 5-8)

The heart of every working farm is its barn. It provides shelter for animals, storage for their feed, and a place to keep tools and machinery. When the barn on Jacob's farm burns down, Jacob's father knows he has to replace it -- and quickly.

In the Amish community a barn is built in a day. Early in the morning friends and neighbors gather to make and raise the frames of the barn, to roof it, and to add the siding. By evening a new building rises from the landscape. Once again the animals have shelter, their feed is stored, and the farm equipment is in place.

Craig Brown's vigorous, folkloric-style paintings convey so much more than an intricate, step-by-step process of barn construction. Shining through is a spirit of generosity, cooperation, and neighborly concern that is at the core of every barn raising.