The Barn

Nine-year-old Benjamin is, according to his schoolmaster, the finest student he has ever taught, a boy meant for more than farm work and likely to do great things one day. Then his father falls gravely ill, and Ben is called home from school.

He decides he cannot wait for greatness to arrive someday. He wants to do something great right now, the one thing that will please his father so much that he will want to live. First, though, he has to persuade his older sister and brother to work alongside him. Together they succeed in ways none of them imagined possible.

The Barn is a novel for young readers by Avi, the author of many children's books, and it unfolds in a farming family of an earlier century.