Read all of Slate’s stories about the 25 Greatest Picture Books of the Past 25 Years .

Sophie Blackall is into history: the stories you find in it, the visuals you get from it, the emotions it makes you feel. Farmhouse , which appears on Slate’s list of the 25 best picture books of the past 25 years, incorporates items Blackall found in an abandoned house on a property she purchased in upstate New York. Blackall ambitiously imagines the structure’s previous life as a family home, then chronicles nature’s reclamation process after the very last child has left and the house is inhabited by squirrels and a hibernating bear.

In a last-act twist, Blackall reveals that this is a real house, discovered by the very woman who wrote this book you hold in your hands. Farmhouse ends

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