School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-4-In this narrative poem packaged as a picture book, the eight-year-old narrator ruminates about her life, describing the various houses that she has lived in. Her family is about to move to a fourth one, and she is not happy. Wong balances the girl's reluctance with her grandmother's humorous realism and artfully weaves both voices into the narration. Whereas her parents are busy envisioning their new dream house, the child yearns for the familiar: waking up to hash browns, waffles, and a chocolate shake at Grandmom's. Finally, motivated by her grandmother's assertion that, "It takes time time/to settle into a house/to learn to love it right/to make it feel homegrown," she stitches together memories of her grandmother's house to create a vision of her own ideal abode and accepts the idea of moving. Lewis's watercolors are exquisite when depicting nature, and are warm in tone, but in the end, uneven. In fact, the layout on one page is quite confusing as it combines small paintings detailing unsavory aspects of houses they see on their "House Hunt Sundays" with the divergent, crowning description of beloved Grandmom's house, without any kind of visual or typographic transition. Helpful for kids who move a lot, this is a solid example of descriptive writing. Unfortunately, the overall feel of the book is sugary.-Sara Paulson-Yarovoy, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.