Tuesday Storytime: Beautiful Houses

A fun collection of people showing how their houses reflect their personality.

If I Built a House (If I Built a Car)
Chris Van Dusen
ISBN: 9780803737518
Our imaginative auto engineer has moved on to houses: his dream home to be exact. We start with labor-saving gadgetry in the kitchen and bathroom, then quickly move into more exotic rooms, with aquariums and detachable rocket playrooms making appearances. A fun book on it's own, and really cute when paired with the car book for a trip through a Jetsons / Joyce future wonderland.

The Big Orange Splot
Daniel Manus Pinkwater
ISBN: 0833506889
Mr Plumbean's identical row house got defaced by a bucket of orange paint dropped by a seagull (nobody knows why) and instead of painting it over, Mr Plumbean gets inspired. Mr Plumbean's neighbors are first incensed, then individually also inspired (by Mr Plumbean's house) and their row of "neat" houses soon becomes anything but. A classic, and a good yarn.

This is Our House
Hyewon Yum
ISBN: 9780374374877
A sweet generational story of a house told in snapshots on one page and related larger messier "life" representations on the facing pages. All in beautiful pastel watercolors with faint fuzzy edges. Not the most exciting, but a sweet book to end on.

Bonus Round:
This House, Once
Deborah Freedman
ISBN: 9781481442848
A beautiful meditative and calming journey through an old northern house, where doors remember being trees, and the stones of doorsteps and slate roof tiles remember being solid rocks in the ground. Sweet and calming and juuuust a bit too slow and meditative for a newly-young crowd of our remaining younger siblings and babies after all the 4s have gone into kindergarden or all-day care. So pretty tho. Sent it home with one of our families to an older sibling who is sad to be growing up and missing storytime.

 

Tuesday Storytime: puddles!

My only regret for this set of books is that Rain Feet is suuuuch a small board book. I really wish that more of them were a bit closer in size to regular picture books.

Muddypaws
Moira Butterfield, illustrated by Simon Mendez
ISBN: 9781407518404
Sweet nameless puppy gets muddy in all sorts of interesting contexts.

Rain Feet
Angela Johnson, illustrated by Rhonda Mitchell
ISBN: 0531068498
A sweet little Black boy (context not clear so can't tell if AA or otherwise). Bright colors, sweet face.

Puddle
Hyewon Yum
ISBN: 9780374316952
Story-within-a-story of an evolving drawing on a rainy day of a boy and his mom and their dog.