Winter Barn

""Like a great woolly mammoth frozen in the Arctic ice, the winter barn waits.'' Inside the 200-year-old barn we find not only farm animals, but also wildlife waiting for spring: a ribbon snake, red ants, white-footed mice, porcupines and a skunk. All listen as the ``barn sings its own songs about winter, summer, and the lives held safe within the great dark cloak of hand-hewn wood.'' The text is sometimes difficult, but the tranquil words beautifully evoke ancient cycles and mysteries. The detailed pictures, some of Parnall's best, are startling. Like Annie Dillard's essays, they train the reader's eye: the end of a beam dazzles like the sun, a dog's nose and a single eye peer into the haven of sleeping woodchucks, and mice burrow in grass-filled mazes between the stones. (5-8)