I posted a picture of some of these on Facebook and Instagram this week and it was fun to see the varied responses. From publishers and families alike. So I thought I'd start sharing pictures of our library loot.
This is actually a very small pile for us. We're getting back to our routine of one to two visits a week - our small town library (
North Hampton, NH) and the larger city library (
Portsmouth, NH) nearby. It's one of the best resources for so many communities: stay-at-home-moms (hello!), students, and overall picture book junkies like all of us.
By Ted Kooser
Illustrated by Jon Klassen
$16.99, ages 4-10, 32 pages
When a little house is boarded up and forgotten, trees sprout up around it and lift it into the sky, in this stirring picture book about the power of nature to lift us up.
As he did in his moving debut Bag in the Wind, author Ted Kooser addresses a conflict between man and nature, but in such a gentle way that it never feels as if any judgment is being made.
In Bag in the Wind, he follows the journey of a discarded bag that's gotten loose in the wind, while here, he observes a man determined to keep trees from sprouting in his lot so that he can have a perfect lawn.
Kooser, in an author's note, explains that the man is struggling against time; as he fights to keep nature from taking over his yard, what he's really fighting is change. His children are growing up and moving away, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
But like paintings, books can be interpreted in many ways, and to me, House Held Up By Trees is also a triumphant story of nature reclaiming what was taken from it, then of nature forgiving those who've trespassed on it.
Atmospheric paintings give the story a tender, dreamy feel, while showcasing the wild beauty of nature. Illustrator Jon Klassen (
This is Not My Hat) depicts woods as graceful, serene places of streaming light and shadows that beckon readers in.
The effect of all of this, the gentle, poetic words and sepia-like pictures, is almost meditative. Readers feel for the man's struggle and see the disconnect between order and chaos play out, then work through the conflicts in their own minds.
What a lovely book to inspire discussions about accepting what cannot be controlled, like the passage of time, and recognizing what can, such as the way humans exist with nature.
When the story opens, all that readers see is the house sitting on a bare square of earth and blurry white paint strokes at the horizon line, where woo
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