Caleb Witting News Today

Patricia MacLachlan, an award-winning writer known to millions of young readers as the author of "Sarah, Plain and Tall," a novel about two motherless farm children and the gentle woman who comes to the prairie to make them whole, died March 31 at her home in Williamsburg, Mass. She was 84.

Known to millions of young readers as the author of 'Sarah, Plain and Tall,' she sought to counter 'condescending' books that tried to teach children lessons.