Reading order
Sarah, Plain and Tall reading order
1- 7.87.8 / 10100 ratings
- Score
- 4 volumes
- Volumes
- 1985–2006
- Published
- about 7 h
- Reading time
- Completed
- Status
- Historical fiction
- Genre
Quick answer
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Publication order
4 volumes1985–2006Completed
- Patricia MacLachlan’s short, quiet novel, winner of the Newbery Medal: on the prairie, Anna and her little brother Caleb, whose mother died when he was born, wait to see whether Sarah, the woman from Maine who answered their father’s advertisement for a wife, will stay or go back to the sea she misses.
- Spare, tender and easy to read aloud in an evening.
- The sequels follow the family over the years, told by Caleb and then the younger children.
- Read in order.
A plan for the whole series
4 volumes, 362 pages, about 7 hours. At 45 min a day that is 9 days.
Stages
This series fits in one stage. You finish around November 7, 2026.
- Stage 17 h9 daysby November 7, 2026
- 1. Sarah, Plain and Tall
- 3. Caleb's Story
- 4. More Perfect Than the Moon
- 5. Grandfather's Dance
- The end of the series
We count 1.1 min per page, the pace of an average novel reader. Faster? Move the slider.
How this plan is calculated
The plan comes from the pages and ratings of each volume: we split the series into stages of about three weeks’ reading, size each break to the stage before it, and read the chance of finishing from how many readers rate the last volume compared with the first. How we work out the plan →
Every volume in order
Order checked by hand · Order and years: Wikidata (CC0). Spotted an error? Tell us. · Data updated October 29, 2026
Frequently asked questions
Which Sarah, Plain and Tall book is the longest?
“Caleb's Story” is the longest at 116 pages; the shortest is “Sarah, Plain and Tall” with 70 pages.